Raul, I find this convention you've spelled out to be attractive, and in my larger J projects have written pretty much in conformance to it. I deviate from it, though, when it comes to a few items. Most prominent is the convention I learned from J.M. Quintana of using lower-case o to mean At (@:). I've become quite fond of that, and have found it nice in both reading and writing. For me it is an example of how a few inconsistencies can be more appealing than a rule that can always be counted on.
--Tracy On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 12:16 PM, Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote: > An a slightly longer answer is: single letter names can be either > lowercase or uppercase, but can't be mixed case. And the same would > hold for names which are numbers prefixed with a single letter. So > those names would either be verb names (when the letter was lower > case) or noun names (when the letter was upper case). Adverbs and > conjunctions would have at least two letters in their names, if you > were following this naming convention. > > But Devon's comments are also important: in general, names should be > meaningful to your audience -- to people that will be reading these > names. > > -- > Raul > > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Devon McCormick <devon...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > The short answer is: don't do that. > > > > If you want to use single letter names for throw-away, local temp > > variables, that's fine but the point of a global is that it has some > > importance and ubiquity. > > > > I'm a big fan of terseness - e.g. > > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/NYCJUG/2009-08-11#TerserisBetter - but > would > > it really kill you to add a letter or two? Not to mention the extra > > difficulty of searching for single-letter names... > > > > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Viktor Cerovski > > <viktor.cerov...@gmail.com>wrote: > > > >> > >> > >> Raul Miller-4 wrote: > >> > > >> > I wrote up a wiki essay (or perhaps a rant) on some issues that come > >> > up in the context of parsing J: > >> > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Raul%20Miller/ParsingJ > >> > > >> > My suggestions there may not be ideal, but I sort of like them. > >> > > >> > -- > >> > Raul > >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> > For information about J forums see > http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >> > > >> > > >> Leaving the question of style aside, there is one formal problem > >> with the convention: how would one interpret names consisting of > >> a single capital letter (with or without trailing numbers): as nouns > >> or adverbs? Both naming schemes make sense. For instance: > >> > >> I =: 1 > >> I1 =: /("1) > >> I2 =: /("2) > >> E =: &.> > >> > >> Also, some might prefer additionally to have something like: > >> > >> e=:1x1 > >> > >> etc. > >> -- > >> View this message in context: > >> http://old.nabble.com/wiki-essay-tp33157128s24193p33168317.html > >> Sent from the J Programming mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > >> > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Devon McCormick, CFA > > ^me^ at acm. > > org is my > > preferred e-mail > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
