moss@BRL-VLD.ARPA (08/08/84)
From: "Gary S. Moss (DRXBR-VLD-V)" <moss@BRL-VLD.ARPA>
Did I say 8 characters? It goes without saying that the pre-pended
underscore is included and its good practice to leave a safety
margin of a couple of characters 'cause you never know, but I started
out on an 11/70 and its 'C' compilers (a v7 and Doug Gwyn's System V
emulation) recognize 7 characters not counting the underscore, so
don't attribute the stupid behavior to the machine if yours only
recognized 6. But seriously, let's not quibble numbers, I am no
expert on available compilers, just follow the unique portion of
the variable name with something meaningful. Worse comes to worse
and it often does, define some mnemonics in a comment.
/* The following abbreviations are imbedded in the local variable names.
ht - hash table
dl - display list
ll - linked-list
dr - device register
*/
struct ht_object_names {
...
} ht_solids[NSOL], ht_regions[NREG];
DL_Word dl_temp[DL_SIZE];
...
Of course you can save characters by using uppercase rather than underscores
to delimit portions of the names (i.e. htObjSolid rather than ht_obj_solid).
-- Moss.