OTOH, I think that some short names have come to influence what we
think of as natural, in particular
i
j
k
as loop indices! I think that by now they have become more natural
than
outer_loop_index
middle_loop_index
inner_loop_index
although I suppose calling something a "loop index" is not fully
informative... but taking as an example Warshall's algorithm (all pairs
connectivity / shortest paths)
for i = 1 to n
for j = 1 to n
for k = 1 to n
do
if (a[i,j] & a[j,k])
then
a[i,k] = true;
what would it make sense to call them? In this example case, they
could be from_point_number, via_point_number, to_point_number ... but
is that how we think of them, or do we think of them as "counting loop
indices" ... in which case, perhaps we don't really think of them as
variables in the normal sense, but part of a stereotypical syntactical
construct?
__John
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