jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane) (02/23/90)
In article <48a55876.12c9a@digital.sps.mot.com>, shelley@atc.sps.mot.com (Norman K. Shelley) writes: >Page 240 of "Eiffel: The Language" states that "internal upper-case letters >... as in putAtRight, contradicts the standard conventions of English ... >and is not part of the recommended style." I agree BUT must note that the >underscore ('_') as a word separator is NOT English either. A whitespace is >the accepted standard but computers have troubles with whitespace in >names/labels so what do we do? I heartily agree with the Eiffel people here. I remember the first time i saw capitalization used as a word separator, as in `addLine'. I thought it's a complete abomination and haven't changed my mind since. I think most people have the same initial reaction but unfortunately manage to get over it. I'm undecided as to whether this style is more repulsive than simply butting the words together, as in `addline'. My favorite style is hypenation, as in `add-line'. This is the prefered style in Lisp and similar languages, and conforms exactly with English usage for using multi-word phrases as words. Unfortunately, in most languages this is precluded by the fact that the hyphen character is taken to be the subtration operator. In these languages, IMHO the next-best choice is to separate words with underscores in place of hyphens. It does look a little strange to non-programmers, but it sure beats the alternatives.