Re: AW: Lua 5.1 (alpha): Documentation

[Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@...>]

David Given wrote:
> That said, though, I have seen a variant of HN used very successfully on the
> EPOC platform: it used prefixes to indicate the *kind* of each symbol. That
> is: type (T), class (C), handle (R), enumeration (E), instance data (i) or
> argument (a). (Locals were untagged.) They were programming in C++, which
> makes a lot of this kind of thing necessary.

I dropped special notation for function arguments, I see them as local 
variables...

> Most people find themselves distinguishing different kinds of identifiers;
> Java and C++ both tend to have ClassNames, functionNames,
> _private_instance_data, and ordinary_locals.

I often see (and use) the variant:
ClassNames, FunctionNames (yes, same notation, but that's not ambiguous, 
is it?), m_memberVariable, ordinaryLocals.

Thus, I don't like functionsNames enforced in Java, but I stick to it, 
force of the crowd...

> This information *is* technically part of the type and so is strictly
> unnecessary, but doing this kind of thing can make your life much easier. For
> example, the hoary old C++ problem of:
>
> struct Class {
> 	int left;
> 	int right;
>
> 	Class(int left, int right)
> 	{
> 		// Um...
> 	}
> };

Indeed, instead of doing, in Java:
    this.left = left;
it allows to do the more elegant (IMHO):
    m_left = left;
or, to use other notations:
    _left = left;
or
    left = aLeft;
etc.

--
Philippe Lhoste
--  (near) Paris -- France
--  http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
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