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From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: MAJOR ANSI C FLAW (my opinion, of course)
Message-ID: <3329@sol.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 17-Oct-87 20:32:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: sol.3329
Posted: Sat Oct 17 20:32:50 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 12:56:53 EDT
References: <8754@utzoo.UUCP> <2481@cbmvax.UUCP> <5532@utcsri.UUCP>
Reply-To: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 24

In article <5532@utcsri.UUCP> flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:
>In article <2481@cbmvax.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes:
>>... something more readable like "LengthString", "LengthBuffer",
>>"LengthLine", "LengthQueue", etc.
>
>Umm... it's much better style in general to use variables that differ
>initially, such as "StringLength", "BufferLength", "LineLength",
>"QueueLength", etc.  And these are indeed unique to 6 characters.

Which is just fine until you need "StringConcat", "StringIndex", "StringField",
"StringUpcase", "StringDowncase", etc.  Six characters are simply not enough
to readably encode both abstract data type and operation name.  One is forced
into some "line noise" encoding to fit into six unique characters.

My personal approach is to use as many characters in external names as I deem
reasonable.  If the code must be ported to a system which only supports six
character external names I'll either buy a REAL compiler/linker or, failing 
that, invoke "s/ReasonableName/resnam/g".

Remember, ANSI may have to support short externals, but you do not.
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-9499	University of Rochester
		      crowl@cs.rochester.edu	Computer Science Department
...!{allegra,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627