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From: garry@alice.att.com (garry hodgson)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: Functions without side effects (was Old confusion)
Summary: flag on the field
Message-ID: <20445@alice.att.com>
Date: 24 Jun 91 19:36:40 GMT
References: <130242@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <4888@osc.COM> <72893@microsoft.UUCP> <1991Jun21.013944.23970@netcom.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 55

In article <1991Jun21.013944.23970@netcom.COM>, jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:
> kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin) writes:

> It gets unacceptably ugly as the number of arguments increases above 1, which
> means that in the typical case, you want named parameters:

>     Print (This_Comment => "I love named parameter names",
>            With_This_Spacing => 5,
>            On_This_Device => Devices.Laserprinter,
>            In_This_Font => Fonts.Helvetica);

> and so forth. I find this considerably better than a name like
> Print_Comment_With_Spacing_Device_and_Font_Toggles or some such.

> >It can be too verbose to *read* as well. If it makes code unecessarily large,
> >that is in and of itself a maintenance problem.
> 
> Here we go again. The C equivalent of the above would typically look
> something like:

>     prnt("I love named parameter names",5,lsptr,hlvtca);

> This DOES take up less space. Is it more readable?

You're doing it again, Jim.  This is the kind of thing that caused all
the flamage about your earlier C-bashing.  Your points are valid enought
without resorting to knocking down straw man code fragments.

Try it this way:

  Here we go again. The C equivalent of the above would typically look
  something like:

  	Print( "I love named parameter names", 5, Laserprinter, Helvetica );

  This DOES take up less space. Is it more readable?

My answer might be, "No, but with the exception of the wired-in constant
5 for spacing (which should have some useful name instead), it is about
equally readable."

People can write good or bad code in whatever language they choose.
I get tired of always hearing that all C programmers are undisciplined
losers who couldn't ( or wouldn't ) write a clean line of code if their
lives depended on it.  ( Yes, I Know you didn't say that ).

Besides, complaining about C is sort of irrelevant.  C++ is here now,
and provides a variety of features that make it easier to write clean
and robust code.  It's like us raggin' on Ada because Pascal had
problems.  Who cares?

-- 
Garry Hodgson
AT&T Bell Labs