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From: Shankar Unni <shankar@webnexus.com>
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 comp.lang.ruby,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.awk,comp.lang.clarion,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.pl1,comp.lang.vrml
Subject: Re: Long names are doom ?
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 09:52:00 -0700
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Date: 2001-05-27T09:52:00-07:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

AG wrote:

> I once saw some code which used (in the same namespace) identifiers
> PassThruID  and PassThroughIDs. They were apparently introduced
> by separate programmers over time and worked fine until someone
> confused them. Took ages to sort it out. So, while those two aren't
> even at 31 char limit, one could argue that 6 char limit would have
> precluded that sort of error :)

Really?  Would it have been somehow been a lot clearer, and harder to
confuse the two, if they had been, say, "PTID" and "PTIDS"? I'd think
the opposite, actually..

You're right in that infinitely long names don't help beyond a certain
point, but 6 chars is ridiculous. Forcing ultra-short names has the
effect of people using an acronym soup for variable names, and "ABCXQZ"
is pretty easy to confuse with "ABCQXZ".

Here's an *actual* example of code I saw posted in another newsgroup
(names erased to protect the guilty - or in this case, the innocent!).
And these are 12-char names - think how much more readable this would
have been with 6-char names:

>                 double sicjpcisj=*scratchptr;
>                 double sicjncisj=*(scratchptr+1);
>                 double cicjpsisj=*(scratchptr+2);
>                 double cicjnsisj=*(scratchptr+3);
>                 double qcksicjpcisj,qcksicjncisj;
>                 double qsksicjpcisj,qsksicjncisj;
>                 double qckcicjpsisj,qckcicjnsisj;
>                 double qskcicjpsisj,qskcicjnsisj;

--
Shankar.