Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!grand!day
From: day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Feature names (Eiffel tip of the week #2)
Keywords: Consistency
Message-ID: <493@grand.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 89 07:04:05 GMT
References: <137@eiffel.UUCP>
Reply-To: day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost)
Organization: Grand Software, Inc., Los Angels, CA 213-650-1089
Lines: 22

In article <137@eiffel.UUCP> bertrand@eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer) writes:
>    An important aspect of object-oriented design of reusable components
>is the proper choice of names for exported features of each class.
>The basic rule is that these names should be both simple (which usually
>implies that they should be short) and chosen according to consistent
>conventions.

I am glad to see this revision toward regularization of
the feature names in the library.  I might add that I
think the best way to standardize such names is for them
to appear in a very basic deferred class, parent of all
similar descendents in which they would be used.  For
example, a deferred base class COLLECTION could have
an "nb_elements" feature, and all descendent COLLECTION
classes would be obliged to use that name for the number
of items in the collection.  So, strings and arrays
which are obviously collections would each have an
nb_elements, instead of a STRING having a length, and
an array having an nb_elements.  (My preferred name for
this feature would be simply, "size").

 --dave