Re: Distinguishing type names from other identifiers

[nabbasi@earthlink.net]

In POSIX threads, types are named with a trailing "_t", as in

                pthread_mutex_t

I found this to be clear and I like it, a little "_t" at the end is not much
extra overhead on the eye. 

I have been programming more in Java lately and since Java is case sensitive,
the convention in Java is to have the class name to start with an Upper 
case, while variables start with lower case.

so, I can write 

    Car car;

and it will clear, and no need to have any post, or prefix stuff added to 
the name of the type to make it clear. I think this is one advantage 
of case sensetive languages, offcourse in Java this convention 
(Upper case for class name, lower case for variables) is strongly 
enforced, even though offcourse there is nothing in the language 
itself that forces anyone to follow this.

my final 2 cents is that a trailing "_t" in Ada would be a good choice 
for a type name, I think "_type" is an overkill, and too much extra typing,
but I prefer to see "_type" than nothing at all in the type name.

Other conventions I use in my C++/Java programming is to use "m_" as the
start of a variable name that is local to a class, this I find helps me
when I am reading code to get a better feeling where things live without
having to go look for them in the code. 

my 1.88 cents.

thanks,
Nasser