Long names are doom ?

[Sheila King]

Well, while I don't think I've used (many? any?) identifiers that were longer than 31
characters, I do routinely use ones that are in the 14-18+ character range.

A script that I am currently developing has the following function names and identifier
names (among others):

123456789012345678901234567890
PrintErrorToLogFile = 19 chars
GypsyMailHomePage = 17 chars
FatalErrorPage = 14 chars
PrintHTTPHeader = 15 chars
PrintClosingHTMLTags = 20 chars
PrintMissingFieldError = 22 chars

OK, so none of them are over 31 characters. I guess that does seem a *little* bit long.
But in general, when I've tried to force my identifiers shorter, I forget what they mean.
This way, with the identifiers I'm using above, I find my code to be much more readable
and nearly self-documenting.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/


On Fri, 25 May 2001 16:29:43 -0700, 00001111 <00001111 at aol.com> wrote in comp.lang.python
in article <3B0EEAE7.FAD87BD at aol.com>:

:
: Hi All,
:
:  Anybody use variables/names longer than 31 character
:and finds it really useful ?
:
:Then please respond  why, where, when.
:I have folks here in comp.lang.fortran who will die claiming that they
:
:- "never seen a well written, legible program
:  that uses any identifiers longer than 18-20 characters..".
:- "long variables names are *hard* to read.  And, you have to
:  read though all the characters of every instance of them...".
:- "it degrades the legibility of a program to use identifiers that
:  can't be easily remembered...."
:
:As a result, despite 90% of computer languages have long, very
:long or 'infinite' identifiers, fortran folks seems plan to stay
:with their 6...aargh ...sorry this was just not far ago... 31 character
:limit intil year 3000.
:
:cheers
:
:
:Seems my ISP does not post in Phyton ng.
:Sending three times all unsuccessful