[LLVMdev] [cfe-dev] draft rule for naming types/functions/variables

[Zhanyong Wan (λx.x x)]

On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Bo Persson <bop at gmb.dk> wrote:
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> On 29 nov 2010 03:47 "Xu Zhongxing" <xuzhongxing at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I enjoyed the new coding style in recent patches. Camel case makes it
>> easy to pick a descriptive name. Starting functions and variables with
>> lower cases reduces chances to conflict with a type name.
>
> On the other hand, having names that only differ in the case of a single character, is not really improving readability at all.

It depends on what you are comparing with, right?

'type' may or may not be a great name for a variable of type (no pun
intended) Type.  If this variable represents a generic value that can
be any Type, then 'type' might be as descriptive as you need it to be.
 Otherwise, you might want to pick names like operandType or
returnType, for example.  In any case, I don't think T, Ty, or AType
is more readable.

> In my opinion, this is a misuse of the C family language rules that happen to allow it. In other languages it is forbidden.

Since changing the C++ language is not an option, we'll have to live
with its rules and conventions, rather than fighting them.  Note that
while some languages (e.g. Pascal) have case-insensitive identifiers,
not all non-C-family languages are like that.  For example, in
Haskell, the practice of uppercase names for types and lowercase names
for variables is not only preferred, but actually enforced by the
compiler.
-- 
Zhanyong