styleguide.txt

documentation style
===================

- reStructuredText formatting is used
  (http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html)
- the first letter in each sentence is not capitalized
- the last sentence in each paragraph has no final period. final ?'s and !'s are
  allowed
- text is wrapped to a new line at 80 characters


BASH script style
=================

every script, except for skeleton scripts provided for the user, must start with
the following header::

  #!/bin/bash
  #
  # ONE LINE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT THIS SCRIPT DOES
  # Copyright (C) 2010 AUTHOR NAME (AUTHOR EMAIL ADDRESS)
  #
  # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
  # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  # the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
  # (at your option) any later version.
  #
  # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  # GNU General Public License for more details.
  #
  # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  # along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

skeleton scripts must start with this header::

  #!/bin/bash
  #
  # SCRIPTNAME does... (ONE LINE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT THIS SCRIPT DOES)
  # original author: AUTHOR NAME (AUTHOR EMAIL ADDRESS)
  # this script was provided by NeuroPipe. modify it to suit your needs

- leave exactly 1 blank line after the header, before any code starts
- variables that are set once and don't change (constants) are named in ALL_CAPS
- $var syntax is used wherever possible, because ${var} is ugly
- inside of if [] blocks, "$var" is used instead of $var