long identifiers

[Harish Hiriyannaiah]

In article <1990Oct25.182246.27505 at nntp-server.caltech.edu> bruce at seismo.gps.caltech.edu (Bruce Worden) writes:
>hp at vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Holzer) writes:
>> [ .... ] [ from Henry Spencer's Ten Commandments... ]
>
>I don't think Mr. Spencer is trying to tell you to restrict your identifiers
>to six characters, but to make them unique in the first six characters.  (I
>think that because that is exactly what he wrote.)  So:
> 
>        int this_here_function();
> 
>is okay as long as you don't have 
> 
>        int this_here_other_function();
>
>in the same program.

This is certainly one of my pet peeves. In the interests of readability, 
the programmer is required to adhere to a strict naming convention, and
at the same time, adhere to uniqueness in the first six characters. This
, IMHO is unduly restrictive. Given a choice between portability and
code maintainability (is there such a word? :-) ) I would throw the
six-character-uniqueness out of the window. I would say, throw such
restrictive linkers and compilers down the chute.

The current mess in naming conventions (or lack of convention) in the
standard C library is a case in point. I can attribute 25% of my programming
headaches to such poorly defined name spaces. ( Let's start a new group.
comp.trash.the.restrictive.linkers :-) :-) )

harish pu. hi.			harish at mrips.bgsm.wfu.edu