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

[dsmith@clark.net (Doug Smith)]

In article <3373666A.31DFF4F5@spam.innocon.com>, Jeff Carter <carter@spam.innocon.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Now, allow me to indoctrinate you into the one true religion. Like you,
> I want to preserve the meaningful name (List, Queue, What_Ever) for use
> by objects and parameters. Unlike you, I insist that suffixes add at
> least some information. So I want my suffix to indicate what kind of
> type we're dealing with, as well as differentiating the type name. I use
> many; here are a few:
> 
> 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
> 
> I'm also creative in my use of parameter names, using Into, Before,
> After, From, To, and so on to avoid as much of this as I can:
> 
> procedure Insert (Into : in out String; Before : in Positive; Value : in
> String);
> procedure Append (Onto : in out List_Handle; After : in Position; Item :
> in Element);
[snip]
> -- 
> Jeff Carter  PGP:1024/440FBE21

Several years ago, I found an excellent article on user interface design
in Smithsonian magazine (no that is not a typo!) Two of the three
principles were: 1) Make usage obvious, and 2) Use conventions. Other
posters have applied these principles, but I like Jeff's usage of the
suffix much better.

Let me go a little further. We have not addressed the semantics issue
very well. I think Jeff's reference to private type handles alludes to
object semantics. If a naming convention grows out of certain common
semantics, then usage will be more obvious. For example, I might
expect certain operations and associated semantics with any type which
has the _Set suffix. By convention, I would expect the union and
intersection operations and the the default value of Null, etc.

This naming convention may apply also to package names, as Booch
used in his reusable components (although I found the architecture
cumbersome). Then, as Jeff suggests, the suffix can distinguish
between types, especially related types used in the same package such
as _Info and _Handle. In fact, I have seen and used the suffix alone:
Object, Class, or Handle.

It is unlikely we will agree on any community-wide convention, but
at least each reusable library should have some "foolish" consistency.

Now to argue the other side, when there are no conventions which
describe a type's semantics, then don't use a suffix: use a descriptive,
general name.