9.1.4 Function Definitions

As a stylistic convention, the return types for all function definitions should be on a separate line. The main reason for this is that it makes it very easy to find the functions in source file, by looking for a single identifier at the start of a line followed by an open parenthesis:

$ egrep '^[_a-zA-Z][_a-zA-Z0-9]*[ \t]*\(' error.c set_program_name (const char *path) error (int exit_status, const char *mode, const char *message) sic_warning (const char *message) sic_error (const char *message) sic_fatal (const char *message)

There are emacs lisp functions and various code analysis tools, such as ansi2knr (see section 9.1.6 K&R Compilers), which rely on this formatting convention, too. Even if you don't use those tools yourself, your fellow developers might like to, so it is a good convention to adopt.