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

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

John asks

<<Robert Dewar wrote:
  >
  > In my programming the name clash that I most often come across is something
  > like
  >
  >     Parent : constant xxx := Parent (K);
  
  Just out of curiosity, what is "K"?  "Key"?  "Kid"?  "Kludge"?  :-)>>

K is just an abbreviation for some expression which is not important
in this example.

<<It's against my religion to give up on the "Thou shalt not abbreviate"
  commandment so easily.  :-)  Where do you draw the line on what counts
  as a "small" scope?  Small scopes can have a nasty tendency to grow with
  time.>>

I notice again you using the term religeon. I strongly advise an agnostic
viewpoint when it comes to programming. Religeously inspired rules and
views tend to be a menace when it comes to programming style. I understand
the comfort of letting rules substitute for judgment, but I think it is a
bad idea to have any absolute rules (except this self referential one :-)

<<If no particular verb comes to mind, a function could just tack on
  "Get_" as a default:

     function Get_Parent
       (Child : in Pointer_Type) return Pointer_Type;

     procedure Set_Parent
       (Child : in out Pointer_Type; Parent : in Pointer_Type);
     ...>>

Well as you know well if you have looked at the GNAT sources, the
Get_ and Set_ prefixes are extensively used, but again, I think it
is a mistake to take a religeously consistent view here. The
fundamental tree walking functions Next, Prev, and Parent are
used *so* extensively that choosing any other names for them
would add unnecessary obfuscatory expansion to the code.