The PEAR Coding Standards apply to code that is part of the official PEAR distribution. Coding standards often abbreviated as CS among developers and they aim to keep code consistent to be easily readable and maintainable by most of PEAR folks.

The original coding standards have been adjusted several times through RFCs:

Those RFCs have been integrated into this document.

The PEAR2 Coding Standards define several other rules that have to be followed once PEAR2 is in place.