Article View: comp.lang.misc
Article #6769Re: Hyphen as identifier characters
From: johnathan.tainter
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1990 23:32
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1990 23:32
28 lines
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1867 bytes
In article <776@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Norman K. Shelley (shelley@atc.sps.mot.com) writes:
>>I would like to propose that the hyphen be added to the default alphabet for
>>identifiers and that the hyphen take over the accepted use of the
>>underscore for separating words in an identifier.
This would (in a reasonable design) preclude the use of '-' for arithmetic,
set notation and other operators then. Design such a language if you want
but also give it only prefix operators or postfix operators.
>>as in putAtRight, contradicts the standard conventions of English ...
>>and is not part of the recommended style." I agree BUT must note that the
>>underscore ('_') as a word separator is NOT English either. A whitespace
>>is the accepted standard but computers have troubles with whitespace in
>>names/labels so what do we do? Common Lisp uses hypens ('-') as a
>>separator and this has more acceptance in English than an underscore.
Well, since underscore isn't used as a typesetting character unto itself then
foo_bar must be foo, an underlined space, and then bar. Why one would
underline just the space in "english" I can't imagine but I don't think it
violates any "rules". In C it is quite sensable. I find this analog to
"english" just as acceptable as hyphen when you look at what it really is.
>Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
--johnathan.a.tainter--
att!ihlpb!tainter
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsd!tainter From: tainter@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (johnathan.tainter) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Hyphen as identifier characters Message-ID: <13311@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> Date: 20 Feb 90 23:32:13 GMT References: <776@enea.se> Reply-To: tainter@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (johnathan.tainter,ih,) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 28