[Python-Dev] PEP 292 for Python 2.4 (original) (raw)

François Pinard pinard at iro.umontreal.ca
Wed Jul 14 14:22:27 CEST 2004

[Nick Coghlan]

François Pinard wrote:

>I know that string' and socket' [modules] exist, despite string'_ _>is evanescent, but they surely forced users at choosing other_ _>identifiers where string' and `socket' would have been perfect.

I would suggest that bare type names are rarely appropriate for use a variable names, except in toy examples.

Or small enough functions. Small functions are not necessarily toys.

If I'm reading someone else's code, and they create a string or a socket, I want to know what it is for, rather than the mere fact this it is a string or a socket.

If I write a function receiving a string as an argument, and the effect of the function being already documented, I see no point writing parameter_string' or the_argument_of_the_function' instead of string', which is clear, clean and simple. Some people would write s' instead, but for one, I stopped overly liking algebraic notation in programs after I left FORTRAN :-). When you speak to someone else about the argument of a simple function, don't you say "then the function takes the string, it massages the string this way, etc.". I like naming my variables the way I would speak about them! :-)

If the type is all that is important, then prepending some simple word such as 'astring' or 'thestring' or 'mystring' makes it clear to the maintainer that the object doesn't really have any significant semantic meaning beyond its type.

Come on, be serious! :-)

-- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

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