THE ELEMENTS OF PROGRAMMING STYLE SSEOOND EDITION, Kernighan and PlaugerTHE ELEMENTS OF PROGRAMMING Brian W. Kernighan Bell Laboratories Murray Hill, New Jersey P. J. Plauger Yourdon, Inc. ‘New York, New York McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY New York St. Lowy Sun Frimcnco Auckland Bogoti Dusseldorf London Madrid Mexico Montreal New Delhy Panama Pans Sio Paulo Singapore Sydney Tokyo TorontoLibrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kernighan, Brian W. The elements of programming style Bibliography: p. Includes index 1. Electonic digital computers— Programming 1, Plauger, PJ, date joint author. U. Tile (QA76.6.K47 1978 001.642 78-3498 ISBN 0.07-038207-5, The Elements of Programming Style Copyright © 1978, 1974 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated, All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elecronic, mechanical, photocopy- ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Bell Laboratories. Printed in the United States of America, 12131415 D0D089 This book was set in Times Roman and Courier 12 by the authors, using a Graphic Sys- tems phototypesetter driven by a PDP-11/70 running under the UNIX opera UNIX isa Trademark of Bell Laboratories.