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From: moss@BRL-VLD.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re:  long variable names
Message-ID: <12225@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 08:55:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12225
Posted: Wed Aug  8 08:55:16 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Aug-84 00:55:46 EDT
Lines: 27

From:      "Gary S. Moss (DRXBR-VLD-V)" 

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.