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From: sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson)
Subject: Re: assign help!!
Date: 1997/05/07
Message-ID: <1997May7.201035.2439@nosc.mil>#1/1
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References: <5kjvcv$evt@news.cis.nctu.edu.tw> <5kn8ko$jcc@top.mitre.org>
Organization: Computer Sciences Corporation
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-07T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <5kn8ko$jcc@top.mitre.org>,
Michael F Brenner <mfb@mbunix.mitre.org> wrote:
>
>           ... I advise the following:
>   (A) make all of the type names plural English noun phrases, i.e.
>       change page_type to pages, text_line to text_lines, 
>       natural to columns, natural to rows, etc. (This will make
>       better use of the type checking facility, but more diagnostic
>       messages will reveal the rest of the bugs, and your program 
>       will be more readable AS AN ENGLISH SENTENCE. That way you
>       will avoid personal preferences for schemes that
>       capitalize anything except the first letter of computer program
>       and acroynyms.);

     This has nothing to do with the original poster's issue, but I 
have to disagree with you on this naming convention.  I much prefer the 
one advocated by Ada Quality and Style: Type names should be general 
singular nouns and object names should be specific singular nouns, ex-
cept for predicates as the names for boolean objects.  (I don't just 
prefer it.  I had some influence on its being in AQ&S that way.)  The 
reason is that your program will be more readable AS AN ENGLISH SEN-
TENCE.  For example

                       Error_Count : Natural;

can be read as "Error_Count is a natural number".  It could even be read 
as "Error_Count: Natural".  Notice also, as the rationale to the naming 
section of AQ&S says, it's Integer, Boolean, and Character, not Inte-
gers, Booleans, and Characters.

				Charlie
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