From: Szabolcs Szasz <sz@...>
Date: 2002-10-10T09:29:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Too Many Underscores?

For one, I did routinely mark my C++ private variables
as __something, *exactly* to make them look ugly enough 
so I won't touch them, ever, only from similarly ugly member 
functions, also marked with underscores, like __func().

It worked very well for me. Perhaps that was one of the 
features of C++ I liked best... :)

However, using 3 characters for variable markup (like 
@__) can be too much, indeed. (Well, at least it does 
*sound* like absolutely too much, but practice may prove 
it otherwise, I'm not convinced of either case.)

Sab

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gavin Sinclair" <gsinclair@soyabean.com.au>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 2:16 AM
Subject: Re: Too Many Underscores?


> 
> From: "Bill Tj" <billtj@glue.umd.edu>
> 
> 
> > Hi Gavin,
> >
> > But if "__var" is ugly, then IMO so is "@__var".  Does Matz still
> > consider to use "@_var" or "@__var" for class private variables?  Or
> > has even the concept of creation of class private variables been
> > abandoned altogether?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Bill
> 
> It's just my opinion/taste; I just dislike underscores as meaningful
> identifiers.  I have a rational justification: underscores are "just another
> letter" in identifiers; using them as *special* at the *beginning* of an
> identifier is, err, inconsistent.
> 
> Also,   underscores are  meant    to represent spaces.    Do  you     really
>  want your  Ruby code   to  look like   this?
> 
> Again, just my opinion/taste.
> 
> Gavin