POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : A Tip for Variables : Re: A Tip for Variables Server Time
10 Aug 2024 09:15:57 EDT (-0400)
  Re: A Tip for Variables  
From: Charles Fusner
Date: 30 Jan 2000 16:35:45
Message: <3894A1F8.CF375956@enter.net>
John VanSickle wrote:
> This convention rests on adding a lower-case letter to the start of all
> variable names, except for objects, and for including at least one
> upper-case letter after this point, to avoid conflicts with the reserved
> words in the POV-Ray scripting language.

Good idea. I've been using a variation on it for a few months now.
Of course, I extended it to everything I could think of that could
be #declared. (And then lost the file I kept it in to a backup
error and had to rebuild it so it probably isn't complete anymore),
but I have found it useful indeed and have been trying lately to 
force myself to remember. The rules I use are 2-4 letter prefix, 
followed by a mnemonically helpful name. Prefix in lower case, each 
word of name capitalized. You're right, it is quite helpful in 
preventing name clashes and identifying variable types. Not 100% 
effective in the name clash thing, but usually you can get around 
the problems that still exist by suffixing the variable name with 
a letter or digit to distinquish different "components" of the same
object. 

I never thought of distinguishing between floats and, for example,
integer looping variables, or booleans, or different kinds of 
vectors (all floats are "fv-" and all vectors are "vec-" in my 
code) but considering half the point is to identify the use of the
variable, that's not a bad idea, really.


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