The GNU coding standards are a set of rules and guidelines for writing programs that work consistently within the GNU system. The standards document is part of the GNU Project and is available from the GNU website [1]. Though it focuses on writing free software for GNU in C, much of it can be applied more generally. In particular, the GNU Project encourages its contributors to always try to follow the standards—whether or not their programs are implemented in C. The C code formatting style is well-known within the free software community, but of course anyone can choose to follow it.