glibc has individual bits of good code, but as a whole is overly complex, with sparsely documented interdependencies between different parts.

On a slightly different topic, I have encountered Google’s C++ coding style standard, and I can say without reservation that it has markedly reduced my perception of Google as an organization that values competence and taste. The only grace that comes to mind is that I have seen worse.

Absolutely! This would be a brilliant way to learn.

The coreutils “novel” might be appropriate.
Each “chapter” is quite digestible and varied.

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=tree;f=src;

I would also recommend “Code Complete” by Steve Mcconnell (http://www.cc2e.com/) on general coding practices as well. It’s quite a read, but you can skip around and get what you need out of it.

For C, I like to look at the Linux Kernel source. You’ll encounter all types of code from really bad to some brilliant implementations of various algorithms. The documentation is not as great as it could be, but there is a lot of community support and books on the code. You will also get code from very modern to really really old. You can look at support for “ancient” hardware to the latest wireless and embedded platforms.

For Python, I like the Trac project by Edgewall (http://trac.edgewall.org/). They provide very good documentation and clear code.

For Objective-C / Cocoa, Adium and Growl are good places to look. They use a lot of the frameworks Cocoa provides and are actively developed.

“Reading Computer Programs: Instructor’s Guide and Exercises”
- by Lionel Deimel and Fernando J. Naveda
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/ems/90.em.003.html

It’s interesting reading.

Cian

We read some stdlib functions in class, and BOOST seems like more of the same but with more documentation.