> I’d be really interested to know what others think of these rules and > what they think is missing. Right now, my guidelines leave a lot of > wiggle room.
Thanks very much for taking this on. I think it is important to get something sensible adopted early on so that Julia doesn't get into the same problem that R has now with e.g. so many different naming conventions for function within base R. Not only does it add to readability, it reduces cognitive load if you don't have to remember which of several different styles the function should be written in. For those who don't know the "mess" R is in, check out this short article: http://journal.r-project.org/archive/2012-2/RJournal_2012-2_Baaaath.pdf Some minor points: re: 13 "If a variable or function name is too long to be read in all lowercase, insert underscores at word boundaries". What do you define as "too long"? How about being a bit more prescriptive for naming certain objects, e.g. using "isX" for testing whether an argument is an object of X? (A bit like the lisp convention of a trailing -p for predicate). Also, mention the convention of a trailing ! for a function that modifies its args? happy new year to you all. Stephen
