Re: Bad coding standards

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <131220001555268634%emery@mitre.org>,
  David Emery <emery@mitre.org> wrote:
> For a while, I collected coding standards as a
> hobby.  I've seen some dumb ideas, but here's my
> nomination for worst idea:
>
>    package Long_Descriptive_Name is
>
>       package LDN renames Long_Descriptive_Name

Interesting .. this does not seem so horrible to me.
If the routines in the package are basically designed
to be used without qualification, so that the
packages could be used with a USE statement, then
the use of

   LDN.useful_descriptive_name

is not so terrible. Given the choice of the following
three possibilities in the GNAT compiler context:

   Analyze_Type_Declaration;
   SC3.Analyze_Type_Declaration;
   Semantics_For_RM_Ch_3.Analyze_Type_Declaration;

I prefer the first one, since anyone who knows
anything about the structure of GNAT knows where
Analyze_Type_Declaration is declared, and if you
don't know, you can press the appropriate key in
GLIDE and be bounced to the right package (or use
gnatfind to quickly find the right package if you
are not using an IDE).

I really find the last one horrible. Lots of noise
here that would greatly increaes the length of the
code and add nothing.

THe middle one is a bit of an oddity. It adds nothing
to the readability, but I can see it being useful in
a junk environment which did NOT have good navigation
tools, since you can use the plain editor search
capability to locate the renaming statement.

So in context I do not think this usage is
necessarily a bad idea.

Robert Dewar


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