Hi Am 14.07.2015 um 16:19 schrieb Joshua Cranmer 🐧: > On 7/14/2015 1:39 AM, Thomas Zimmermann wrote: >> When writing code, I consider it good style to not write into >> anything that starts with an 'a' prefix, except result arguments. > > "You should never write into something with an 'a' prefix except when > you should," if you simplify it. I've actually avoided using the a > prefix for outparams precisely because it feels more consistent to > never assign to a variable with an a value (and also because it > distinguishes between Foo *aInArray and Foo *outparam), yet I did see > someone upthread praising that it helped you see which values were > outparams.
As I said above, I'd support introducing a separate prefix for output parameters. And consequently enforcing the no-a-writes policy in reviews. > >> Makes the code cleaner, more readable, and often gives it a clear >> structure. When reading the code later on, it's easy to spot the >> parts of a the code that directly depend on external parameters by >> looking for 'a' and 'm' prefixes. > > This, I feel, is an aspiration which is not supported by any of the > code I work on (which admittedly is heavily COMtaminated). Any > intuition about a difference between aFoo and foo in terms of "relies > on arguments" is bound to be wrong. I agree in general, but there are a number of conventions for special symbols: prefixes, all-capitals, start-with-capital, etc. Each helps to structure the code and make it more readable. That doesn't mean that the other symbols are unimportant. I never claimed that it's possible to understand code without actually reading it. > > > Given that the aFoo rule is one of the least adhered-to portions of > our style guide, and has been for as long as I've worked on Mozilla > code; that the ancillary rule of "don't assign to an argument" has > also been ignored on quite a few occasions; and that there hasn't been > any real history of people complaining about the lack of adherence to > this style guide point, I rather suspect that whatever people might > say in how useful the 'a' prefix is, they get along quite fine without > it. > In such cases, I always wonder why the coding style is incorrect. The discussion has a number of good points in favor of using 'a', but I missed convincing arguments in favor of not using 'a'. Are there any? I don't consider "I don't get what 'a' is good for" a convincing argument. Best regards Thomas _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
