Re: [patch] SELinux: trivial, unify iterator variable naming

[Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com>]

On Tuesday 29 July 2008 10:47:59 pm Russell Coker wrote:
> On Monday 21 July 2008 23:38, Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com> 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


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