Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsd!tainter
From: tainter@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (johnathan.tainter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Hyphen as identifier characters
Message-ID: <13311@cbnewsd.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 Feb 90 23:32:13 GMT
References: <776@enea.se>
Reply-To: tainter@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (johnathan.tainter,ih,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 28

In article <776@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Norman K. Shelley (shelley@atc.sps.mot.com) writes:
>>I would like to propose that the hyphen be added to the default alphabet for
>>identifiers and that the hyphen take over the accepted use of the
>>underscore for separating words in an identifier.

This would (in a reasonable design) preclude the use of '-' for arithmetic,
set notation and other operators then.  Design such a language if you want
but also give it only prefix operators or postfix operators.

>>as in putAtRight, contradicts the standard conventions of English ...
>>and is not part of the recommended style."  I agree BUT must note that the
>>underscore ('_') as a word separator is NOT English either.  A whitespace
>>is the accepted standard but computers have troubles with whitespace in
>>names/labels so what do we do?  Common Lisp uses hypens ('-') as a
>>separator and this has more acceptance in English than an underscore.

Well, since underscore isn't used as a typesetting character unto itself then
foo_bar must be foo, an underlined space, and then bar.  Why one would
underline just the space in "english" I can't imagine but I don't think it
violates any "rules".  In C it is quite sensable.  I find this analog to
"english" just as acceptable as hyphen when you look at what it really is.

>Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se


--johnathan.a.tainter--
   att!ihlpb!tainter