Re: Long Constant Names

[Alan C <steelville@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My inclinations are like this:

It is good practice to have a naming convention just to cut down the 
time involved in naming things.

I'm not convinced about the utitility of too-long names, or too many of 
them anyway.  Depending on what conventions are in use, and how much 
they are faithfully followed, the longer the names are the more 
variation is possible for finding what you're looking for, or finding 
the variable you coded. It's one thing I didn't like when I did Cobol.   
You can get lost trying to remember if you went top down in cateogory, 
or regarded top-down categories at all,

Three-letter abbreviations like the IBM command-naming practice helps in 
the mnemonics.

So my practice lines up maybe with Duane's in this, Michael's in keeping 
the names not-too-long, jstevens with the 3-character practice, so I 
guess I agree with just about everybody!

That said, whatever you wind up having to do on this one, it won't 
matter too very much, and you'll get used to it of course! :-) 

-- Alan


> it makes a difference when doing global find and change type changes. 
> It cuts down on the number of false finds.
>
> in my experience constants are frequently grouped together.  all the
> codes for a status field is the classic example.  In such a case I
> think you have to have a naming convention.
>
> I find I spend a lot of time naming things.  almost to the point that
> I cant code it until I have named it.  having a naming convention that
> is reasonable simplifies that process.
>
> -Steve
>