Karen, As an ex-mainframer and COBOL programmer, we never, repeat never used short criptic names. Also, I did some programming in mainframe IBM assember. There you were limited to 8 char names but you could freely add comments. Again, you usually made an attemp at readable names or else you were in deep dodo later on when you had to go in on short notice and patch a failing program (you know those 1:00 AM problems) that was causing the ovenight batch production to come to a screeching hault.
That was the case with good programmers. Inept programmers were another case altogether. Luckly there wer shop standards and a productrion review process before you could move a prgram from test to production. Again none of this online instant fix that we have today. Ah!! for the good old days. I have just recoverd from recreating my main database after screwing up an ALTER TABLE set of commands that encounterd a buffer overflow midway through the 5 table set of commands that rendered my main member table unuseable. Unfortunately the backup was a day old and had done some updates where I didn't have a record of changes made. Was fortunate that I could unload all the data and reload. Main problem was dammage to the sys_defaults table. Had to compare to a good version to figure what didn't make it into the unload. Next time will be more careful if I have to do mass changes to computed column definitions. Jim Bentley American Celiac Society [email protected] tel: 1-504-737-3293 --- On Wed, 2/18/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Annoying program habits To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 6:41 PM Jim: Yes, I'm sure he was limited to 8 character variable names. But if you're putting up a choose box and asking them to pick a CustomerID, why would the guy call the varaible v#x4 rather than vCustID which is 8 characters! I was wondering whether perhaps the guy used to program in another language, like a mainframe language, and it was common to use cryptic variables like that. Karen You may have to determine how old the program code is. I seem to remember that Way..Way.. back when (that is when the underlying rbase.exe and other programs were coded in FORTRAN) you were limited to 8 character variable names. Hence, those obscure names. On the other hand, the programmer may have been employing a perverse form of job security. In the past I handled the problem by running RSTYLE to get a list of variable names. Determine a better value. Then add it to a file RSYLE.PRE with syntax oldname newname on separate lines for each name. Then you run rstyle again and it changes the names in your command files etc. Jim Bentley
