Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
in [Fortran]
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From: Richard Maine on 24 Oct 2006 15:13 glen herrmannsfeldt <gah(a)seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > For function/subroutine names I might believe that they could > be a little longer than variable names, though. That's my philosophy also. I figure that context helps a little more with understanding variable names. Plus variable names are likely to be used multiple times in a statement or in a group of statements, making long ones more awkward. But for procedure names, I want the name to give enough clue that I don't need to go looking up the docs or source code in some other file. And a procedure is likely to be referenced only once in a group of statements. So my procedure names tend to be a little longer than my variable names. I still don't go for ridiculously long - I've never felt in the least bit constrained by the f90/95 31-character limit; I could mostly do just fine in 15, though I don't use that as a hard limit. -- Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on 24 Oct 2006 15:59 In comp.lang.fortran Richard Maine <nospam(a)see.signature> wrote: (snip) > But for procedure names, I want the name to give enough clue that I > don't need to go looking up the docs or source code in some other file. There once was an ALGOL W compiler written by Wirth and Hoare around 1968 that allowed up to 256 character identifiers. (That is with card input, so more than three cards long.) It seems to have been lost by now, though the manual still exists. I still remember reading about that one when I was learning Fortran with six character identifiers. I never got to actually try very long ones, though. -- glen
From: Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj on 24 Oct 2006 16:14 Richard Maine wrote: > glen herrmannsfeldt <gah(a)seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > > >>For function/subroutine names I might believe that they could >>be a little longer than variable names, though. > > > That's my philosophy also. I figure that context helps a little more > with understanding variable names. Plus variable names are likely to be > used multiple times in a statement or in a group of statements, making > long ones more awkward. > > But for procedure names, I want the name to give enough clue that I > don't need to go looking up the docs or source code in some other file. > And a procedure is likely to be referenced only once in a group of > statements. So my procedure names tend to be a little longer than my > variable names. I still don't go for ridiculously long - I've never felt > in the least bit constrained by the f90/95 31-character limit; I could > mostly do just fine in 15, though I don't use that as a hard limit. > In many cases, systems, external names are more limited in length.
From: Richard Maine on 24 Oct 2006 19:59 Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urjlew(a)bellsouth.net> wrote: > In many cases, systems, external names are more limited in length. When using f77 and earlier long-name extensions, that was an issue I recall seeing. F90 requires that the system allow names up to at least 31 characters. If the system doesn't naturally allow them, the compiler is supposed to compensate somehow. Yes, ways exist and compilers have used them. For example, some compilers automatically generate short names and have a translation table for the full names to the short ones. To my knowledge, there are no f90 compilers that fail to correctly accomodate 31-character names as required by the standard. There have been a few pretty flakey things briefly sold as f90 compilers. I suppose some of those might not have gotten it right; they weren't around for long enough for the matter to come up. Some of them didn't get a lot of things right and had pretty brief lives as a result. -- Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
From: Brian Boutel on 24 Oct 2006 22:24
glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: > In comp.lang.fortran krw <krw(a)att.bizzzz> wrote: > (snip) > > >>This_is_the_variable_that_holds_the_outside_loop_counter = >>This_is_the_variable_that_holds_the_outside_loop_counter + 1; > > > One of the advantages of the C ++ operator, though > I agree that overly long variable names don't improve readability. > > For function/subroutine names I might believe that they could > be a little longer than variable names, though. I dislike arbitrary limits in general. This includes arbitrary limits on identifier length. However, the freedom to do something doesn't mean that it is compulsory to do it all the time. --brian -- Wellington, New Zealand "What's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh." |