Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!necntc!ima!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Readable names
Message-ID: <18347@think.UUCP>
Date: 21 Mar 88 20:49:32 GMT
References: <2318@bsu-cs.UUCP> <2835@enea.se> <1810@sics.se> <25548@cca.CCA.COM> <2857@enea.se> <2779@mmintl.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@fafnir.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24

In article <2779@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>In article <2857@enea.se> sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>>  But if you mean to imply that NumOfAcc would be better than 
>>NumberOfAccidents, I have to object.
>
>I don't much care for either of these alternatives.  Looking at the words
>here, 'Number' is convention and should be abbreviated, 'Of' is
>superfluous, and 'Accidents' contains the meat of the name.  (Just to keep
>things down, I would omit the final 's' here, since it can be inferred from
>the 'Number' prefix.)  This gives us NumAccident or nAccident, depending on
>which convention you use for 'Number'.

Another thing to take into account is context.  If this variable is
being used in a program that deals with insurance claims, the
abbreviation "Acc" for "Accident" would be pretty clear from the
context.  In another program, it might be necessary to spell it out to
avoid ambiguity.


Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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