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| -rw-r--r-- | CONTRIBUTING.md | 27 |
1 files changed, 17 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md index a5b474e0..63e279b5 100644 --- a/CONTRIBUTING.md +++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md @@ -186,16 +186,23 @@ all of the characters, and replace any invalid characters with an underscore. ### Construction/Destruction Functions -For functions that are responsible for constructing and destructing an object, -they should be written as a pair of one of two forms: -* `init`/`finish`: These initialize/deinitialize a type, but are **NOT** -responsible for allocating it. They should accept a pointer to some -pre-allocated memory (e.g. a member of a struct). -* `create`/`destroy`: These also initialize/deinitialize, but will return a -pointer to a `malloc`ed chunk of memory, and will `free` it in `destroy`. - -A destruction function should always be able to accept a NULL pointer or a -zeroed value and exit cleanly; this simplifies error handling a lot. +Functions that are responsible for constructing objects should take one of the +two following forms: + +* `init`: for functions which accept a pointer to a pre-allocated object (e.g. +a member of a struct) and initialize it. +* `create`: for functions which allocate the memory for an object, initialize +it, and return a pointer. + +Likewise, functions that are responsible for destructing objects should take +one of the two following forms: + +* `finish`: for functions which accept a pointer to an object and deinitialize +it. Such functions should always be able to accept an already deinitialized +object. +* `destroy`: for functions which accept a pointer to an object, deinitialize +it, and free the memory. Such functions should always be able to accept a NULL +pointer. ### Error Codes |