Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!emory!gatech!mcnc!ncsuvx!news
From: harish@ecelet.ncsu.edu (Harish Hiriyannaiah)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: long identifiers
Keywords: identifiers
Message-ID: <1990Oct26.181304.8376@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 26 Oct 90 18:13:04 GMT
References: <15953@csli.Stanford.EDU> <487@taumet.com> <15959@csli.Stanford.EDU> <272477A0.6845@tct.uucp> <1925@tuvie> <1990Oct25.182246.27505@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Reply-To: harish@ecelet.ncsu.edu.UUCP (Harish Hiriyannaiah)
Organization: North Carolina State University
Lines: 30

In article <1990Oct25.182246.27505@nntp-server.caltech.edu> bruce@seismo.gps.caltech.edu (Bruce Worden) writes:
>hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Holzer) writes:
>> [ .... ] [ from Henry Spencer's Ten Commandments... ]
>
>I don't think Mr. Spencer is trying to tell you to restrict your identifiers
>to six characters, but to make them unique in the first six characters.  (I
>think that because that is exactly what he wrote.)  So:
> 
>        int this_here_function();
> 
>is okay as long as you don't have 
> 
>        int this_here_other_function();
>
>in the same program.

This is certainly one of my pet peeves. In the interests of readability, 
the programmer is required to adhere to a strict naming convention, and
at the same time, adhere to uniqueness in the first six characters. This
, IMHO is unduly restrictive. Given a choice between portability and
code maintainability (is there such a word? :-) ) I would throw the
six-character-uniqueness out of the window. I would say, throw such
restrictive linkers and compilers down the chute.

The current mess in naming conventions (or lack of convention) in the
standard C library is a case in point. I can attribute 25% of my programming
headaches to such poorly defined name spaces. ( Let's start a new group.
comp.trash.the.restrictive.linkers :-) :-) )

harish pu. hi.			harish@mrips.bgsm.wfu.edu