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From: ignatz@aicchi.UUCP (Ihnat)
Newsgroups: net.sources,net.unix-wizards,net.lang.c
Subject: long names in 'C' programs
Message-ID: <476@aicchi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-May-85 01:35:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: aicchi.476
Posted: Fri May 17 01:35:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 18-May-85 01:35:29 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Analysts International Corp; Chicago Branch
Lines: 35
Xref: watmath net.sources:2913 net.unix-wizards:13226 net.lang.c:5244

All right, people...

If you insist on making 'C' programs look like COBOL by using
32,767 character names, the *very* least you can do is make the
damn things unique in the first 7 characters, OK?

This long-name-chauvinism is annoying enough in sources posted to
net.sources, but now I'm running into it in sources for paying business
purposes, and it's, frankly, intolerable.

One of the greatest assets of 'C' is its great degree of portability.
But there are tens of thousands of binary-license 'C' compilers out there.
These people don't have the freedom to modify their compiler; and when
they pay some outside joker to write something in 'C', and he/she writes
it with 15-character variable names that are only unique in the last 2
characters because "compilers should be able to handle it, and it's
conceptually desirable", or some such drivel, they can't regenerate it
on their system.  What then?  Yep.  They pay twice, to have someone else
fix the code.

C'mon; all 'C' compilers that I know of will accept very long variables,
just chopping off the excess characters.  I'll read your bloody Dickensian
novels, if I must, but fer Crissakes, at least do it in a portable, intelligent,
and reasonable manner.  (No, don't tell me that I can write or get a
preprocessor program to mung the source--this makes debugging and
understandability even more of a joke than it already is.)

	In High Dudgeon,


-- 
	Dave Ihnat
	Analysts International Corporation
	(312) 882-4673
	ihnp4!aicchi!ignatz