pylint -- should I just ignore it sometimes?

[Matteo Landi]

Another situation in which I needed to disable such kind of warnings
is while working with graphics modules.
I often use variable names such as x, y, z for coordinates, or r,g,b for colors.
Would longer names make the reader's life easier?

Best regards,
Matteo

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve at remove-this-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:47:02 +0200, Jean-Michel Pichavant wrote:
>
>> except ValueError, e:
>>
>> Use meaningful names, this is so important. 'e' is not meaningful.
>> 'exception' would be slighly better.
>
> While I agree with everything else you had to say, I have to take
> exception to this comment [pun intended].
>
> "e" as a short name for a generic exception instance is perfectly
> reasonable, like:
>
> i, j, k for an index, or a loop variable
>    e.g. for i in range(100)
> n for some other integer variable
> s for a string
> x for a float, or an arbitrary sequence object
>    e.g. [x.spam() for x in some_sequence]
>
> and similar.
>
> The last example is very instructive. What do you gain by racking your
> brain for a "more meaningful" name instead of x? The obvious
> alternatives, "obj" or "item", are equally generic as "x", they don't add
> any further information. And how much information do you need? It's easy
> to parody:
>
> [some_sequence_item.spam() for some_sequence_item in some_sequence]
>
> The very shortness of the name is valuable because it reduces the *human*
> parsing time in reading, and there is no cost because the conventions are
> so familiar. The convention of "for i in ..." says "this is a loop over
> an integer" so strongly, that I would argue that "for index in ..." would
> actually *delay* comprehension.
>
> Furthermore, the use of a single letter cues the reader that this
> variable isn't notable -- there's nothing unusual or unconventional about
> it, or it isn't the important part of the algorithm, or that its scope is
> severely limited. For instance, consider the classic example of
> exchanging two variables in Python:
>
> a, b = b, a
>
> versus:
>
> thing, other_thing = other_thing, thing
>
> The first example puts the emphasis on the *technique*, not the
> variables. The second obscures it behind needlessly longer but still
> generic names.
>
> You are absolutely right to insist on meaningful variable names. Where
> you go wrong is to assume that single letter names can't be meaningful.
>
>
>
> --
> Steven
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>



-- 
Matteo Landi
http://www.matteolandi.net/