The purpose of this page is to provide students within the MALNIS group with access to work done by other students.  In this way we want to encourage re-use of existing software.  This should help students in their research, either by direct application of the software modules or through teaching by example.  Students are encouraged to download the source code and modify it according to their particular needs.

The success of this endeavour hinges upon strict coding standards.  Software is not re-usable without the necessary comments or documentation.  Any module found in this page has to conform to these standards.  In order to limit the complexity of the directory and file structures, all the neccessary information is saved in the source file itself.  In this way, a student may simply download the source code and immediately have all the required information available.  We impose the following coding standards on modules:

• Detailed header information, containing
• Source File Name
• Author
• Purpose of the software
• Description
• Inputs and Outputs (file locations, file names, parameters)
• Operating system
• Compilation / Run command
• Example on how to execute or use the module
• Known problems / bugs / limitations
• Sufficient comments (not just in the header!)
• Indentations
• Sensible variable names (not just x, y, z!)
• procedures/functions/methods no longer than 50 lines
• detailed comment associated with each procedure/function/method documenting its purpose, input and output
• clearly document the side effects of any procedure/function/method

Sample header files

• C/ C++/Java