On Tuesday 29 July 2008 10:47:59 pm Russell Coker wrote: > On Monday 21 July 2008 23:38, Paul Moore <paul.moore@xxxxxx> wrote: > > A few thoughts: others did not object to those variable names when > > the patches were proposed, or at any point prior to this thread, > > and no one besides you and I has commented on this thread. This is > > a sign to me that the 'idx' variable name is not a significant > > distraction to the community. > > One thing that is worth considering is the possibility that idx might > be better for searching. > > Lots of words contain an 'i' character and therefore searching for a > variable named 'i' in a code base is going to be difficult (automated > searching is mostly useless, probably the best option is to have your > editor highlight every instance and visually scan for the ones with > are not surrounded by brackets, braces, parenthesis, spaces, commas, > or whatever else is not acceptable in a variable name in the language > in question. > > Of course if you have a syntax highlighting editor then it might > parse enough of the language to avoid this (but that isn't always > available), and if you have a language such as Perl a search for \$i > should work reasonably well. > > http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/07/30/variable-names/ > > But using idx, index, or even names such as "count" which refer to > the meaning of the program might be more efficient overall. I've > posted some more thoughts on this issue at the above URL. FWIW, you hit on my own selfish reasons for using "idx" instead of "i": easier searching (my XEmacs config highlights search terms in red) and greater "understandability". -- paul moore linux @ hp -- This message was distributed to subscribers of the selinux mailing list. If you no longer wish to subscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the words "unsubscribe selinux" without quotes as the message.
