Re: Warning: Religious naming convention discussion :-) [was: assign help!!]

[wemagor@sym1.cca.rockwell.com (Wayne Magor)]

Jeff Carter <carter@spam.innocon.com> writes:
>Jay Martin wrote:
>> 
>> "John G. Volan" <johnvolan@sprintmail.com> writes:
>> ...
>> >I only wish the original designers of Ada83 had clued into this style
>> >from the start.  I find myself wishing Ada95 looked more like this:
>> 
>> >    Integer   : Integer_Type;
>> >    Natural   : Natural_Type;
>> >    Float     : Float_Type;
>> >    Boolean   : Boolean_Type;
>> >    Character : Character_Type;
>> >    String    : String_Type;
>> >    Duration  : Duration_Type;
>
>But it wastes fewer characters than the equally ugly _Type.


Using _Type *is* ugly, but we use it fairly often anyway.  Requiring it in
coding standards is a very bad idea.  Sure, it is mechanical, but it does
not allow the very natural Units package we typically use.  Example:

     Altitude : Units.Feet;
     Latitude : Units.Radians;
     Rate     : Units.Hertz;

It's pretty important to know that Altitude is in feet and not nautical miles
or meters.  It's also pretty important to know what is in Degrees and what
is in Radians.  This is the most straightforward and elegant solution, IMHO.


>Numeric types: _Value, _Count, _Range
>Enumeration types: _Id, _Name
>Array types: _Set, _List
>Record types: _Group, _Data, _Info
>Task types: _Agent, _Controller
>Private types: _Handle


These are fairly natural, I can find many examples of those exact uses in
our software, however, as I stated above, requiring type names with those
suffixes is not wise.