[fpc-devel] Local variable names and colision with attributes/properties names

[Marcos Douglas]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 1:48 PM, Michael Van Canneyt
<michael at freepascal.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 27 Sep 2012, Marcos Douglas wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:08 PM,  <michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 27 Sep 2012, Marcos Douglas wrote:
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, it's always possible. In practice, I haven't seen this happen a
>>>>> single
>>>>> time in the 10+ years that the compiler has had this feature. That
>>>>> doesn't
>>>>> mean that it's impossible, but it's another factor in the "good to
>>>>> have"
>>>>> versus "causes more harm than good" equation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, happened on the own compiler.  ;-)
>>>> IMHO, these collisions happen a lot and because of this many
>>>> programmers use prefixes in local variables, see:
>>>> lNet, fpGUI, tiOPF2, Indy, and even Delphi (DateUtils unit eg.).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Exactly.
>>>
>>> The compiler helps you by forcing you to use a prefix in objfpc mode in
>>> case
>>> you forgot.
>>
>>
>> The collisions exist because the compiler give us an error. If the
>> compiler respect the scope, the collisions would not exist.
>
>
> I know there is no collision in the strict sense of the word. There is just
> the very real possibility of making human mistakes.
>
>
>> However we can use "poor names" -- very difficult to happen a
>> collision -- to represent a variable like A, J, D... but I do not
>> think this is a good practice and you?
>
>
> I do think this is good practice. I will seldom use variable names of more
> than 2 characters.

So, just a letter "J" tell us everything we need about the variable?
IMHO this contradicts the spirit of Pascal, a beautiful and readable
language, but I guess I will lost this discussion.

Marcos Douglas