Re: [OT?] Coding Style

Larry McVoy
2001-01-23T00:01:32Z

On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 11:56:40PM +0000, Anton Altaparmakov wrote:
> At 16:42 22/01/2001, Mark I Manning IV wrote:
> >Stephen Satchell wrote:
> > > I got in the habit of using
> > > structures to minimize the number of symbols I exposed. It also
> > > disambiguates local variables and parameters from file- and program-global
> > > variables.
> >
> >explain this one to me, i think it might be usefull...
>
> What might be meant is that instead of declaring variables my_module_var1,
> my_module_var2, my_module_var3, etc. you declare a struct my_module { var1;
> var2; var3; etc. }. Obviously in glorious technicolour formatting... (-;
> That's my interpretation anyway...

Mine too and I think it's a good idea. I have code in BitKeeper where I
both did and did not do that for command line options and I much prefer
the structure version.

Another habit I used to use and have fallen out of, which is a bad idea, is
one where you use a prefix in stucture files so that you can see
the difference between

p->st_mode
and
p->f_mode

In other words, the prefix implies the structure name. Early versions of the
C compiler had all structure fields (I mean _all_) in one name space so this
wasn't style, it was required. I must say that it makes code more readable.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm