Naming convention (programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:30, 10 October 2006

Revision as of 16:38, 10 October 2006

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== Information in identifiers ==

There is significant disagreement over whether it is permissible to use short (ie, containing few characters) identifiers. TheOne argument being that it is not possible to encode much information, if any, in a short sequence of characters. The Whetheropposition programmershowever preferclaim short identifiers because they are too lazy to type, or think up,that longerlong identifiers, or because in many situations a longer identifier simply cluttersclutter the visible code and provides no worthwhile additional benefit (over a shorter identifier) is an openobscure researchimportant issuesyntax.

Often forgotten in the highly personal debates over which naming practice is "best" is the fact that a typical business application will actually be written in several software languages. Every software language has its own idiosyncrasies as to special meaning characters (perhaps to indicate local vs global variable), separators, and length.

In early software languages, written on punch cards, variable names could be restricted to a maximum 6 characters. It would not be unusual for such cryptically short names (in Fortran) to be migrated to COBOL.

== Extra information in identifiers ==