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From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Six, no, seven, no, make that eight, mono, no, dual, wait...
Message-ID: <3205@sol.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 10:03:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: sol.3205
Posted: Wed Oct 14 10:03:43 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Oct-87 23:58:53 EDT
References: <1132@gilsys.UUCP> <1246@bsu-cs.UUCP> <6543@brl-smoke.ARPA> <11599@labrea.STANFORD.EDU> <8997@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 19

In article <8997@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>[Re: the symbol space of fixed length identifiers composed of a letter
>followed by some number of letters or digits.]  Here are some numbers:
>    [six mono-case 2e9]     [thirty-one dual-case 5e55]
>... In more direct, if less definite, terms, the *feeling* of six monocase
>characters is like that of a straightjacket. ... and 31 or more never gets
>noticed. ... I would say that dual case adds no `warm fuzzies', ...

The space of possible symbols should not be measured in terms of possible
character combinations, but in terms of possible word combinations.  (Accepted
abbreviations are fine too.)  With this measure, we can see clearly why six
characters is such a straightjacket.  There are not a lot of meaningful
combinations of words which will fit into six characters.  There are a lot more
that will fit in 31 characters.  This measure also explains why dual case does
not help much.
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-9499	University of Rochester
		      crowl@cs.rochester.edu	Computer Science Department
...!{allegra,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627