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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c,net.lang.pascal
Subject: Variable names
Message-ID: <1679@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Jul-86 20:26:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.1679
Posted: Mon Jul 28 20:26:43 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Jul-86 21:25:05 EDT
References: <2222@brl-smoke.ARPA> <7014@boring.mcvax.UUCP> <3130@utcsri.UUCP> <2248@ihlpg.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 15
Xref: mnetor net.lang.c:5506 net.lang.pascal:353

In article <2248@ihlpg.UUCP> tainter@ihlpg.UUCP writes:
>	notfound : boolean;

Some programming advice, free for the asking and worth every penny: *never*
use negative names (like notfound) for boolean variables.  It may save you a
boolean complement in an if statement or two, but it's confusing.  If
somebody comes along later and makes a change which requires the
complementary condition in an expression, it gets *really* confusing.  The
savings in the if statement is ephemeral anyhow; any decent compiler will
generate equivalent code on most architectures (and those where there is a
real difference in the ease of "branch on true" vs "branch on false" are as
likely to favor one as the other).

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108