naming convention discussion

[ica2ph@alpha1.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de (Peter Hermann)]

Robert Dewar (dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu) wrote:

> But on the final vote, the French delegation in particular made a major
> issue of opposing this, and insisted on its deletion, so it was deleted.
> They felt it encouraged bad identifiers such as A__________________B,
> which is horrible, indeed, though not much worse than OOOOOOOOOOOOO0000OOOO
> and no one has yet proposed a rule to somehow eliminate the ability to
> write the latter (or for that matter a simple syntactic rule which would
> make it imopssible to choose bad identifier names :-)

"bad" is relative. We designed a finite element code (still running)
for computation of dynamical structural problems. The user of our system
could deliver fortran code fragments to be called by our system,
the so-called excitiation functions, subject to be frequently called
e.g. for math. integration, etc. .
This was accomplished by reading his statements and generating wrapping
fortran functions, compiling them, and binding them in the next major step
on OS-level, of course. The potential name clashes' problem was solved
by chosing unlikely names like O00O0O for real variables and I0OO0O for 
integer variables in the same scope of the users' variables.
The project part within the system was "O0NUFU" (numerical functions spoiled)
and the teamers still tease me for that name ;-)

-- I cannot accept any superfluous constraint upon the choice of names.
-- with excess experience on portability/maintenance/linkers/OSs in mind, 
   I am reluctant to allow trailing underscores in identifiers:
   They open several cans of worms.

BTW, the dynamic updating process of software upon a running process
should be emphasized in Ada200x (I have the Mars mission in mind), IMHO.

With Robert de War in mind, I am putting my flame suit on. :-)

--
Peter Hermann  Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de
Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen
Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney)