Re: on package naming, should the word "_pkg" be part of it?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, Darren New wrote:
> > Also, if you accept the hypothesis that there is typically just one main
> > type per module (yeah, I know, an Eiffelesque hypothesis) you can just use
> > "T" for the type and use qualified names so that the package name provides
> > the meaningful part.
>
> What about endings for "T",

I don't understand.

> "access T",

Depends on the program. I've used Ref_T, but T is a short enough type name
that I don't think it's necessary to name the pointer unless you need the
type and the pointer simultaneously a lot. For some reason, in my Ada
code, unlike my C code, that isn't common. If you want to expose a type
which has is represented by an access type, call it T.

> "T'Class", and so on?

Same kind of answer as above.

Read the antecedent part of my if-then. "If you only have one main type in
the module, then ...". I didn't claim that this is a universal, though it
can work a lot of the time. The meta idea is that the type name is
completely generic, like naming tagged types "Class" (hmmm) or "Object"
(awful) and the meaningful part of the name is pushed onto the package
name.

A nastier objection is that many modules have more than one exported type,
and not even one that can be called the "main" one. In that case you can
still use an "_T" suffix, but since those Ada programmers who prefer a
suffix have gravitated towards "_Type" I think that it makes more sense to
just use that if you are so inclined.

-- Brian