RE: [boost] Re: algorithms namespace

From: Phil Richards (news_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-24 13:12:32

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 18:21:19 -0800, Powell, Gary wrote:
> I'm siding with Dave A and the longer names. You can always shorten it in
> your code with an alias.

And, you can always lengthen a short name with an alias.  In fact, you
might end up with something more usable:
namespace filesystem = boost::fs;

Not that I actually like "fs" very much, but the argument about what can
be aliased to what seems rather specious to me as a justification for
picking one form over the other.

At the end of the day, it's just a name - the fact that people who use
boost::spirit don't think it is a C++ extension for communicating with the
dead suggests to me that the name quickly becomes irrelevant to anybody
using it.  The key thing is to make sure that people who want to use a
library facility can find it - this is the one place where a long name
*might* help, but generally the docs do it better. 

"fcpp" falls into the same category as "spirit".  It is a "product" name,
not a functional description (no pun intended) - algorithm and filesystem
fall into the latter category.  So what?  I dunno.

I'm siding with nobody - I don't like abbreviations, but I also don't like
enormously long fully qualified names.  I sort of like David's "files",
but it doesn't quite scan correctly to my eye (probably because it's a
plural).

All this does is reinforce my view that naming things is frequently the
hardest thing to do right  :-)

Sorry for rambling,

phil
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