Wow Karen!! I didn't know if any one remembered APL. I did a stint at the New York Times and we used APL on the Model 5100 desktop computer for our budget and planning functions.
Jim Bentley American Celiac Society [email protected] tel: 1-504-737-3293 --- On Thu, 2/19/09, Bruce Chitiea <[email protected]> wrote: From: Bruce Chitiea <[email protected]> Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Annoying program habits To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009, 8:27 AM Karen: If the guy was a recovering APL programmer, v#x4 was probably a projection of: vIReallyWishICouldRememberWhatTheHellThisHereThingieMeans. I recommend the BigRedFireTruck test for object naming: if it hits you tomorrow, will your replacement hail or hate you (all other factors being equal)? cheers, bruce/safesectors > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Annoying program habits > From: [email protected] > Date: Wed, February 18, 2009 4:41 pm > To: [email protected] (RBASE-L Mailing List) > > > Jim: Yes, I'm sure he was limited to 8 character variable names. But if > you're putting up a choose box and asking them to pick a CustomerID, why would > the guy call the varaible v#x4 rather than vCustID which is 8 characters! > > I was wondering whether perhaps the guy used to program in another language, > like a mainframe language, and it was common to use cryptic variables like > that. > > Karen > > > > You may have to determine how old the program code is. I seem to remember > > that Way..Way.. back when (that is when the underlying rbase.exe and other > > programs were coded in FORTRAN) you were limited to 8 character variable names. > > Hence, those obscure names. > > > > On the other hand, the programmer may have been employing a perverse form of > > job security. > > > > In the past I handled the problem by running RSTYLE to get a list of > > variable names. Determine a better value. Then add it to a file RSYLE.PRE with > > syntax > > oldname newname > > on separate lines for each name. > > > > Then you run rstyle again and it changes the names in your command files > > etc. > > > > Jim Bentley
