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000002_icon-group-sender _Tue Jan 13 12:31:51 1998.msg
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Received: from kingfisher.CS.Arizona.EDU (kingfisher.CS.Arizona.EDU [192.12.69.239])
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From: gep2@computek.net
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 11:10:44 -0600
Message-Id: <199801131710.LAA12356@axp.cmpu.net>
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Subject: Re: Stripping blank and comment lines
To: icon-group@optima.CS.Arizona.EDU
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Well, in the spirit of commenting on style...
Personally, I've never understood how it is that people think it makes sense to
append a type PREFIX to a variable name.
I think that (if you need one at all) a type SUFFIX is *far* more intelligent.
In a sorted XREF, it's absurd to sort variables principally by their data type
anyhow. If you have a number of variables regarding dates, for example, you'd
want things like DateP (date pattern), DateMonth, DateYear, DateDay, DateWkDay,
DateLeap, etc to all sort together in the Xref, regardless of that some of them
might be flags, others might be character strings, others might be patterns and
some might be numbers. It's the height of idiocy to propose a naming system
where the data type is the most important ordering item. Imagine a dictionary
where "dog", "doglike", "doggy", "doghouse", "dogcollar" and "dogsmell" were
sorted and arranged in a dictionary starting from the RIGHT-hand end of each
word!
I'm not accusing the poster of originating this claptrap, but I do think it's
interesting that so many people, lemming-like, adopt such absurd conventions
that some obvious loon dreams up and proposes as a naming convention "standard".
It's especially strange in a language like Icon or S*BOL where the type of a
variable can be QUITE variable during the execution of a program!
Again, please don't take this as a personal attack on the poster... it's really
intended more as a GENERAL observation on an industry's willingness to stupidly
follow the most ABSURD of Pied Pipers.
Glad to be able to get that off my chest. :-) (the post obviously touched a
nerve here) :-)))
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2/
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