4 Program Behavior for All Programs

This chapter describes conventions for writing robust software. It also describes general standards for error messages, the command line interface, and how libraries should behave.

• Non-GNU Standards: We consider standards such as POSIX; we don't "obey" them.
• Semantics: Writing robust programs
• Libraries: Library behavior
• Errors: Formatting error messages
• User Interfaces: Standards about interfaces generally
• Graphical Interfaces: Standards for graphical interfaces
• Command-Line Interfaces: Standards for command line interfaces
• Option Table: Table of long options
• Memory Usage: When and how to care about memory needs
• File Usage: Which files to use, and where