Programming Guidelines - HMS-Analytical-Software/SASUnit GitHub Wiki

As in all programming guidelines one shall use common sense.
When developing SASUnit macros and programs please stick to the programming conventions you find there.

General Guidelines:

• Comment the source code where necessary to explain why it happens here.
  What happens here is often evident through the source code.
  If not then add comments to clarify.
• Add headers for the program documentation
• Refactoring is always beneficial, but don't over do it.

Here are some guidelines specific for the SASUnit environment

• General naming conventions for
  • data sets
    • Names of temporary data sets should start with '_' (e.g. work._data_set_abc)
  • variables
    • Variable names in data sets should be descriptive
  • macro symbols
    • Global macro variables start with 'g_' local ones with 'l_'
    • Declare all local macro variables by %local;
  • macro programs
    • The name of the macro program files must be lowercase
      • SAS autocall facility expects that under Linux
    • Components of program names can be seperated by '_'.
      No Camel Case, no Snake Case.
      Macros that are not part of the SASUnit interface start with '_' to mark them as 'helper' macros
• Structure and naming conventions of macro programs for assertions
  • Macros for assertions follow this convevntion: 'assert<function>'
• Structure and naming conventions of macro programs for reporting
  • Macros used for reporting follow this convention: 'report<function>'
  • Because we have many reporting macros for rendering the have a separate convention: '_render_<function>'