Re: feature request

[Dirk Herrmann]

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

> [ Please don't shoot the messenger :-) ]

Sorry if I have upset you.  I didn't mean to.  I know the whole mess is 
not your fault :-)

> I did  a web search  to find some alternative  source of info  for the
> sake of  argument (or rather, for  the sake of avoiding  it :-). These
> are among the first few hits:

Thanks for doing this investigation.

>   A popular C style guide
>   <URL:http://www.jetcafe.org/~jim/c-style.html>
>   ``Typedef  Names: Capitalized, with  no  _t suffix  or other  cutesy
>   thing to say ``I'm a type'' -  we can see that from it's position in
>   the declaration!  (Besides, all names ending with _t are reserved by
>   Posix.) The capitalization is needed  to distinguish type names from
>   variable names -  often both want to use  the same application-level
>   word.''
[...]
> > 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.  
> 
> This is  just because so many  people make the mistake  of copying the
> POSIX convention.  They  see ``size_t'' and think, ``Oh,  that's not a
> bad idea, I'll do that, too.''  It is a common mistake.

Well, it's only a mistake because of POSIX.  In our special situation,
however, capitalization may be possible, but will probably look strance:

scm_Size, scm_Ulong, scm_Bits etc.

We _could_ use such a convention.  But, do we want to?  Is there another
suggestion for uniform type naming in guile?

> > Can we use SCM_BOOL_T, or is that also a problem?  ("Oh ... it makes me
> > mad ... mad!"  -- "Easy, Mungo, easy ..." :-)
> 
> SCM_*_T  seems  safe to  me.   Personally,  I  don't care  for  ``type
> tagging''.  But I also don't like typedef'ing away structs. *shrug*
> 
> What were they before?  scm_bool?  What was wrong with that?

SCM_BOOL_T is not a type, but a constant, namely the value #t.  OK, the
name ist strange and might even be renamed some day in the 57th
century.  But, it's not only types that could sensibly end with _t.

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann