One of the joys of "short names" is that they have a habit of being both cultural and experiential. In terms of i, j, k loop variables I have to blame FORTRAN (in my engineering days) for that one (all vars starting with letters I to n being integers).
On the other hand, when writing Pascal and Modula 2 I resorted to "count", "count-1" etc. as it defined the intent of the variable. Sadly, it did not take me long to go back to FORTRAN habits to use I, j and k (etc.) when the intent of the variable was obvious. My question is whether i, j and k are still recognised *globally* as viable and therefore known loop counters? If so, are there other examples? Carl -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Sturdy Sent: 4 March 2005 11:39 To: Richard Bartlett Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: PPIG discuss: About natural naming OTOH, I think that some short names have come to influence what we think of as natural, in particular i j k as loop indices! I think that by now they have become more natural than outer_loop_index middle_loop_index inner_loop_index although I suppose calling something a "loop index" is not fully informative... but taking as an example Warshall's algorithm (all pairs connectivity / shortest paths) for i = 1 to n for j = 1 to n for k = 1 to n do if (a[i,j] & a[j,k]) then a[i,k] = true; what would it make sense to call them? In this example case, they could be from_point_number, via_point_number, to_point_number ... but is that how we think of them, or do we think of them as "counting loop indices" ... in which case, perhaps we don't really think of them as variables in the normal sense, but part of a stereotypical syntactical construct? __John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([email protected]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([email protected]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
