Re: Not intended for use in medical,

["Nick Roberts" <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com>]

Kaz Kylheku <kaz@vision.crest.nt.com> wrote in article
<5ktldo$2pp@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> an example of the use of short identifiers in
some C code.

I think Kaz' example illustrates quite neatly that there are places where a
short identifier is appropriate. Remember, the Ada 95 standard defines the
constants 'Pi' and 'e' in Ada.Numerics, and these can hardly be cited as
examples of long identifiers! And yet, they are highly appropriate, are
they not? I am not impressed by programmers who get religious about these
things.

Having said that, I would caution against the use of single-letter
identifiers where possible, for the extremely pragmatic reason that trying
to do a search-and-replace on them (e.g. to change all occurrences of
variable 'a' to 'x') a minefield. It's almost always easy to use two
letters instead (e.g. 'na' and 'nb' instead of just 'a' and 'b'), and
generally makes search-and-replace much less dangerous. If I could have a
penny for every time I've fallen foul of that one ... ;-)

Nick.
(See - I have a short identifier)