On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 11:56:58PM +0100, deadalnix wrote: > Le 08/03/2012 12:55, Steven Schveighoffer a écrit : [...] > >The nice thing about dur!"seconds" is that only one module-level > >symbol is introduced (dur), and it's unlikely to conflict with local > >symbols > > > >It may not be as intuitive, but it's certainly readable, and not too > >verbose to type. > > > >-Steve > > the shorter the symbol, the higher the probability of collision. > This is math. Definitively an argument in favor of not abbreviating.
That's not the whole story, though. Languages don't use all combinations of symbols equally. A symbol like 'abc' collides very easily, whereas 'kqx' is much less likely to collide, even though both are the same length. (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law) T -- Once bitten, twice cry...