[Python-Dev] PEP 292 for Python 2.4

[François Pinard]

[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 'a_string' or 'the_string' or 'my_string' 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