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From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: Not intended for use in medical,
Date: 1997/05/08
Message-ID: <E9vH6G.88E@world.std.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 240255705
References: <3.0.32.19970423164855.00746db8@mail.4dcomm.com>
 <5kmek2$9re@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <E9rMuy.Hs0@world.std.com> <dewar.863062734@merv>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-08T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <dewar.863062734@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>There is something potentially wrong, which is that compact operation
>notations like this are most happy with short identifier names, as in
>
>   a++;
>
>not nearly so pretty is
>
>   Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay++;

Well, I suppose, but you could make the same argument about various
notations that *are* in Ada.  E.g.:

    Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay:=Some_Other_Big_Fat_Identifier_Name;

If I write it without spaces, the ":=" tends to get lost (compared to
"x:=y;").  If Ada had "++", I would probably write:

    Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay ++ ;

which doesn't look so bad to me.  Nor does:

    Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay += 1;

which is certainly no worse in this regard than:

    Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay := 1;

Instead of ++, I would be just as happy with:

    Increment(Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay);

But my point was that the side-effect issue is more important than this
lexical stuff.  I would object to:

    Nice_Long_Array_Name[Increment(Nice_Long_Integer_Name)] := ...;

on the same basis (where this (evil) Increment both modifies its
argument, and returns a result).  I realize I'm mixing Ada and C
notation there.

>Well of course this is not the only reason that C programmers so often
>favor short cryptic identifier names (and of course there is nothing in C
>which requires them), but it is a contributing factor!

Perhaps.  Who knows?  I think it's mainly a cultural thing -- everybody
does it that way, so new programmers learn to do it that way.

- Bob