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- Path: newsfeed.internetmci.com!xmission!news
- From: tknarr@xmission.com ( Todd Knarr )
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2,comp.lang.eiffel
- Subject: Re: Hungarian notation
- Date: 11 Jan 1996 03:56:00 GMT
- Organization: Chaos Central
- Message-ID: <4d21og$iab@news.xmission.com>
- References: <30C40F77.53B5@swsbbs.com> <marnoldDJEvtJ.1Lx@netcom.com> <4aleun$jlk@ns.RezoNet.NET> <marnoldDJMDBG.CFz@netcom.com> <4asnkr$7b0@solutions.solon.com> <4ath75$e7i@barnacle.iol.ie> <4b4kij$svt@news.microsoft.com> <dewar.819489496@schonberg> <4bd <4cf8hf$8fe@hopi.gate.net> <4cgq30$c0v@weck.brokersys.com> <4cvu68$2jb@macaw.cyberport.com>
- Reply-To: tknarr@xmission.com ( Todd Knarr )
- NNTP-Posting-Host: slc92.xmission.com
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-
- In <4cvu68$2jb@macaw.cyberport.com>, tangent@cyberport.com (Warren Young) writes:
- >This is one of the reasons HN is useful. By forcing the programmer to
- >visit every place that the variable is used, the programmer has an
- >opportunity to check the semantics of the variable's use. If the type
- >of the variable has changed, chances are that the semantics have
- >changed as well. How many times have you changed a variable's type to
- >fix something, only to break something else?
-
- I find this is false in practice. In general, when I change the declared
- type of a variable, I'm doing the equivalent of changing an int to a long.
- The result of that in the presence of HN is a massive amount of monkey-work
- to visit and change every occurrence of the variable when the only reason
- for the change is to replace iCount with lCount and nothing more. Since I
- hate doing manual typographic changes like that and it can be difficult or
- impossible to write a script to do it automatically in all files involved,
- I find most often that it does not get done ( and I can't really blame
- the people who didn't do it ).
-
- Changes in semantics do happen, but usually as a side-effect of a major
- change in the fundamental way the code itself works, not as a side-effect
- of a simple type change. As such they require code changes completely
- above and beyond the variable names.
-
- --
- Todd Knarr : tknarr@xmission.com | finger for PGP public key
- | Member, USENET Cabal
-
- Seriously, I don't want to die just yet. I don't care how
- good-looking they are, I! don't! want! to! die!"
- -- Megazone ( UF1 )
-
-