Re: feature request

[Dirk Herrmann]

On Mon, 28 May 2001, Jacques A. Vidrine wrote:

> On Mon, May 28, 2001 at 07:09:40PM +0200, Lars J. Aas wrote:
> > On Mon, May 28, 2001 at 12:17:07AM +0200, Dirk Herrmann wrote:
> > : Hello everybody,
> > : 
> > : in CVS guile, SCM is now defined as:
> > :    typedef struct scm_unused_struct * SCM;
> > : Hmmm.  I just realize that it should probably rather be
> > :    typedef struct scm_unused_struct_t * SCM;
> > 
> > Isn't the _t suffix usually attached to the type you typedef?  I mean,
> > I've seen a lot of "typedef struct somestruct_s * somestruct_t", and I've
> > used that idiom a lot myself too.
> 
> I guess I'll repeat this here:  some type names are reserved by POSIX,
> including those that  end in `_t'.  I'd quote  from POSIX 1003.1-1996,
> but I'm not at home at the moment  to put my hands on it.  If you have
> the draft POSIX 1003.1-200x, see XSH sec 2.2 Name Space, line 638.
> 
> I don't necessarily  advocate sweeping the tree and  removing the `_t'
> type names, but I don't think we should be adding new ones.

Sorry for being insistent, but...

... could you please verify and show us the corresponding passage?  I
really want to be sure about this one, because it seems to be quite a big
demand to request all names ending with '_t', especially since it seems to
be a widely used pattern to name types that way.  Reserving names within
some prefix range makes sense to me, but reserving names with a common
postfix is strange.  The prefix is typically used to identify the package
a definition comes from, and requesting some postfix _across all packages_
is something that I somehow can not really believe without seeing the
corresponding passages myself, sorry.

Personally, I like the usage of _t for types, and I would be sorry if all
the recent efforts to unify this usage in guile would be made useless by
some, well, I take the freedom to call it stupid, name reservation
policy.  Sweeping the tree and _adding_ the _t postfix is exactly what has
just been done, and IMO would be the right thing.

Assuming you are right, (why don't these folks reserve some prefix posix_
and stay with it ?) is there a recommendation how to name user types then?  
Can we use SCM_BOOL_T, or is that also a problem?  ("Oh ... it makes me
mad ... mad!"  -- "Easy, Mungo, easy ..." :-)

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann