Perl Style: Length of Variable Names

Jan 1, 1998 by Tom Christiansen

• `The appropriate length of a name is directly proportional to the size of its scope.’ –Mark-Jason Dominus

• Length of identifiers is not a virtue; clarity is. Don’t write this:

      for ($index = 0; $index < @$array_pointer; $index++) {
           $array_pointer->[$index] += 2;
      }
  

  When you should write:

      for ($i = 0; $i < @$ap; $i++) {
           $ap->[$i] += 2;
      }
  

  (One could argue for a better name than $ap, though. Or not.)

• Global variables deserve longer names than local ones, because their context is hard to see. For example, %State_Table is a program global, but $func might be a local state pointer.

      foreach $func (values %State_Table) { ... }
  

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Copyright © 1998, Tom Christiansen All rights reserved.