I have a problem regarding method names. My project has the following folders Physics -> Equations -> Mechanics. This is where I intend to create classes with methods that allows me to calculate various equations. The problem lies with how to give those methods meaningful names that would explain their useage. To my knowledge each and every equation doesn't come with a name that helps us differentiate between them.
I tried to give my methods names according to their endresult and it seemed working just fine however there is a limit to overloading methods. My input variables are so far only doubles.
What is the best practice to this?
From Oracle Docs:
Naming a Method
Although a method name can be any legal identifier, code conventions
restrict method names. By convention, method names should be a verb in
lowercase or a multi-word name that begins with a verb in lowercase,
followed by adjectives, nouns, etc. In multi-word names, the first
letter of each of the second and following words should be
capitalized. Here are some examples:
run runFast getBackground getFinalData compareTo setX isEmpty
Typically, a method has a unique name within its class. However, a
method might have the same name as other methods due to method
overloading.
You can use parameter types in method name: ie.
DistanceBySpeedAndTime(double speed, double time);
DistanceByAccelerationAndTime(double acceleration, double time);
Related
Inside an Objective-C method, it is possible to get the selector of the method with the keyword _cmd. Does such a thing exist for the names of arguments?
For example, if I have a method declared as such:
- (void)methodWithAnArgument:(id)foo {
...
}
Is there some sort of construct that would allow me to get access to some sort of string-like representation of the variable name? That is, not the value of foo, but something that actually reflects the variable name "foo" in a local variable inside the method.
This information doesn't appear to be stored in NSInvocation or any of its related classes (NSMethodSignature, etc), so I'm not optimistic this can be done using Apple's frameworks or the runtime. I suspect it might be possible with some sort of compile-time macro, but I'm unfamiliar with C macros so I wouldn't know where to begin.
Edit to contain more information about what I'm actually trying to do.
I'm building a tool to help make working with third-party URL schemes easier. There are two sides to how I want my API to look:
As a consumer of a URL scheme, I can call a method like [twitterHandler showUserWithScreenName:#"someTwitterHandle"];
As a creator of an app with a URL scheme, I can define my URLs in a plist dictionary, whose key-value pairs look something like #"showUserWithScreenName": #"twitter://user?screenName={screenName}".
What I'm working on now is finding the best way to glue these together. The current fully-functioning implementation of showUserWithScreenName: looks something like this:
- (void)showUserWithScreenName:(NSString *)screenName {
[self performCommand:NSStringFromSelector(_cmd) withArguments:#{#"screenName": screenName}];
}
Where performCommand:withArguments: is a method that (besides some other logic) looks up the command key in the plist (in this case "showUserWithScreenName:") and evaluates the value as a template using the passed dictionary as the values to bind.
The problem I'm trying to solve: there are dozens of methods like this that look exactly the same, but just swap out the dictionary definition to contain the correct template params. In every case, the desired dictionary key is the name of the parameter. I'm trying to find a way to minimize my boilerplate.
In practice, I assume I'm going to accept that there will be some boilerplate needed, but I can probably make it ever-so-slightly cleaner thanks to NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings (thanks #CodaFi — I wasn't familiar with that macro!). For the sake of argument, I'm curious if it would be possible to completely metaprogram this using something like forwardInvocation:, which as far as I can tell would require some way to access parameter names.
You can use componentsSeparatedByString: with a : after you get the string from NSStringFromSelector(_cmd) and use your #selector's argument names to put the arguments in the correct order.
You can also take a look at this post, which is describing the method naming conventions in Objective C
I am wondering if there exists already some naming conventions for Ocaml, especially for names of constructors, names of variables, names of functions, and names for labels of record.
For instance, if I want to define a type condition, do you suggest to annote its constructors explicitly (for example Condition_None) so as to know directly it is a constructor of condition?
Also how would you name a variable of this type? c or a_condition? I always hesitate to use a, an or the.
To declare a function, is it necessary to give it a name which allows to infer the types of arguments from its name, for example remove_condition_from_list: condition -> condition list -> condition list?
In addition, I use record a lot in my programs. How do you name a record so that it looks different from a normal variable?
There are really thousands of ways to name something, I would like to find a conventional one with a good taste, stick to it, so that I do not need to think before naming. This is an open discussion, any suggestion will be welcome. Thank you!
You may be interested in the Caml programming guidelines. They cover variable naming, but do not answer your precise questions.
Regarding constructor namespacing : in theory, you should be able to use modules as namespaces rather than adding prefixes to your constructor names. You could have, say, a Constructor module and use Constructor.None to avoid confusion with the standard None constructor of the option type. You could then use open or the local open syntax of ocaml 3.12, or use module aliasing module C = Constructor then C.None when useful, to avoid long names.
In practice, people still tend to use a short prefix, such as the first letter of the type name capitalized, CNone, to avoid any confusion when you manipulate two modules with the same constructor names; this often happen, for example, when you are writing a compiler and have several passes manipulating different AST types with similar types: after-parsing Let form, after-typing Let form, etc.
Regarding your second question, I would favor concision. Inference mean the type information can most of the time stay implicit, you don't need to enforce explicit annotation in your naming conventions. It will often be obvious from the context -- or unimportant -- what types are manipulated, eg. remove cond (l1 # l2). It's even less useful if your remove value is defined inside a Condition submodule.
Edit: record labels have the same scoping behavior than sum type constructors. If you have defined a {x: int; y : int} record in a Coord submodule, you access fields with foo.Coord.x outside the module, or with an alias foo.C.x, or Coord.(foo.x) using the "local open" feature of 3.12. That's basically the same thing as sum constructors.
Before 3.12, you had to write that module on each field of a record, eg. {Coord.x = 2; Coord.y = 3}. Since 3.12 you can just qualify the first field: {Coord.x = 2; y = 3}. This also works in pattern position.
If you want naming convention suggestions, look at the standard library. Beyond that you'll find many people with their own naming conventions, and it's up to you to decide who to trust (just be consistent, i.e. pick one, not many). The standard library is the only thing that's shared by all Ocaml programmers.
Often you would define a single type, or a single bunch of closely related types, in a module. So rather than having a type called condition, you'd have a module called Condition with a type t. (You should give your module some other name though, because there is already a module called Condition in the standard library!). A function to remove a condition from a list would be Condition.remove_from_list or ConditionList.remove. See for example the modules List, Array, Hashtbl,Map.Make`, etc. in the standard library.
For an example of a module that defines many types, look at Unix. This is a bit of a special case because the names are mostly taken from the preexisting C API. Many constructors have a short prefix, e.g. O_ for open_flag, SEEK_ for seek_command, etc.; this is a reasonable convention.
There's no reason to encode the type of a variable in its name. The compiler won't use the name to deduce the type. If the type of a variable isn't clear to a casual reader from the context, put a type annotation when you define it; that way the information provided to the reader is validated by the compiler.
In programming (and math) there are variables and constants. Is there a name to describe both of them?
I was thinking value, but that's not it. A value is what variables/constants contain, not what they are.
I would call it a symbol. From google:
sym·bol/ˈsimbəl/Noun
1. A thing that represents or stands for something else,
esp. a material object representing something abstract.
...
From what I know Its called a field
How about:
maths and logic: term
programming: l-value and r-value.
There are a few different terms I use, depending on context. I'll give you a list of the terms I (might) use - sometimes I'll just default to calling everything 'variables'.
Field - a variable or constant that's declared as part of the class definition.
Parameter - one of the inputs specified when defining a method in a class.
Argument - the actual value that you provide for a parameter when calling a method.
Method variable - a variable declared inside a method.
Method constant - a constant declared inside a method.
In OOP, the attribute can be both a variable and a constant.
Identifiers
In computer languages, identifiers are tokens (also called symbols) which name language entities. Some of the kinds of entities an identifier might denote include variables, types, labels, subroutines, and packages.
Symbols are super set of Identifiers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier#In_computer_languages
How about "data item"?
One definition: https://www.yourdictionary.com/data-item
Example showing it can be used for local variables/constants as well (unlike "field" or "attribute"): https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/VC222/EclWin/GUID-A3B817EE-1D63-4F67-A62C-61DE681C6719.html
Scheme uses a single namespace for all variables, regardless of whether they are bound to functions or other types of values. Common Lisp separates the two, such that the identifier "hello" may refer to a function in one context, and a string in another.
(Note 1: This question needs an example of the above; feel free to edit it and add one, or e-mail the original author with it and I will do so.)
However, in some contexts, such as passing functions as parameters to other functions, the programmer must explicitly distinguish that he's specifying a function variable, rather than a non-function variable, by using #', as in:
(sort (list '(9 A) '(3 B) '(4 C)) #'< :key #'first)
I have always considered this to be a bit of a wart, but I've recently run across an argument that this is actually a feature:
...the
important distinction actually lies in the syntax of forms, not in the
type of objects. Without knowing anything about the runtime values
involved, it is quite clear that the first element of a function form
must be a function. CL takes this fact and makes it a part of the
language, along with macro and special forms which also can (and must)
be determined statically. So my question is: why would you want the
names of functions and the names of variables to be in the same
namespace, when the primary use of function names is to appear where a
variable name would rarely want to appear?
Consider the case of class names: why should a class named FOO prevent
the use of variables named FOO? The only time I would be referring the
class by the name FOO is in contexts which expect a class name. If, on
the rare occasion I need to get the class object which is bound to the
class name FOO, there is FIND-CLASS.
This argument does make some sense to me from experience; there is a similar case in Haskell with field names, which are also functions used to access the fields. This is a bit awkward:
data Point = Point { x, y :: Double {- lots of other fields as well --} }
isOrigin p = (x p == 0) && (y p == 0)
This is solved by a bit of extra syntax, made especially nice by the NamedFieldPuns extension:
isOrigin2 Point{x,y} = (x == 0) && (y == 0)
So, to the question, beyond consistency, what are the advantages and disadvantages, both for Common Lisp vs. Scheme and in general, of a single namespace for all values versus separate ones for functions and non-function values?
The two different approaches have names: Lisp-1 and Lisp-2. A Lisp-1 has a single namespace for both variables and functions (as in Scheme) while a Lisp-2 has separate namespaces for variables and functions (as in Common Lisp). I mention this because you may not be aware of the terminology since you didn't refer to it in your question.
Wikipedia refers to this debate:
Whether a separate namespace for functions is an advantage is a source of contention in the Lisp community. It is usually referred to as the Lisp-1 vs. Lisp-2 debate. Lisp-1 refers to Scheme's model and Lisp-2 refers to Common Lisp's model. These names were coined in a 1988 paper by Richard P. Gabriel and Kent Pitman, which extensively compares the two approaches.
Gabriel and Pitman's paper titled Technical Issues of Separation in Function Cells and Value Cells addresses this very issue.
Actually, as outlined in the paper by Richard Gabriel and Kent Pitman, the debate is about Lisp-5 against Lisp-6, since there are several other namespaces already there, in the paper are mentioned type names, tag names, block names, and declaration names. edit: this seems to be incorrect, as Rainer points out in the comment: Scheme actually seems to be a Lisp-1. The following is largely unaffected by this error, though.
Whether a symbol denotes something to be executed or something to be referred to is always clear from the context. Throwing functions and variables into the same namespace is primarily a restriction: the programmer cannot use the same name for a thing and an action. What a Lisp-5 gets out of this is just that some syntactic overhead for referencing something from a different namespace than what the current context implies is avoided. edit: this is not the whole picture, just the surface.
I know that Lisp-5 proponents like the fact that functions are data, and that this is expressed in the language core. I like the fact that I can call a list "list" and a car "car" without confusing my compiler, and functions are a fundamentally special kind of data anyway. edit: this is my main point: separate namespaces are not a wart at all.
I also liked what Pascal Constanza had to say about this.
I've met a similar distinction in Python (unified namespace) vs Ruby (distinct namespaces for methods vs non-methods). In that context, I prefer Python's approach -- for example, with that approach, if I want to make a list of things, some of which are functions while others aren't, I don't have to do anything different with their names, depending on their "function-ness", for example. Similar considerations apply to all cases in which function objects are to be bandied around rather than called (arguments to, and return values from, higher-order functions, etc, etc).
Non-functions can be called, too (if their classes define __call__, in the case of Python -- a special case of "operator overloading") so the "contextual distinction" isn't necessarily clear, either.
However, my "lisp-oid" experience is/was mostly with Scheme rather than Common Lisp, so I may be subconsciously biased by the familiarity with the uniform namespace that in the end comes from that experience.
The name of a function in Scheme is just a variable with the function as its value. Whether I do (define x (y) (z y)) or (let ((x (lambda (y) (z y)))), I'm defining a function that I can call. So the idea that "a variable name would rarely want to appear there" is kind of specious as far as Scheme is concerned.
Scheme is a characteristically functional language, so treating functions as data is one of its tenets. Having functions be a type of their own that's stored like all other data is a way of carrying on the idea.
The biggest downside I see, at least for Common Lisp, is understandability. We can all agree that it uses different namespaces for variables and functions, but how many does it have? In PAIP, Norvig showed that it has "at least seven" namespaces.
When one of the language's classic books, written by a highly respected programmer, can't even say for certain in a published book, I think there's a problem. I don't have a problem with multiple namespaces, but I wish the language was, at the least, simple enough that somebody could understand this aspect of it entirely.
I'm comfortable using the same symbol for a variable and for a function, but in the more obscure areas I resort to using different names out of fear (colliding namespaces can be really hard to debug!), and that really should never be the case.
There's good things to both approaches. However, I find that when it matters, I prefer having both a function LIST and a a variable LIST than having to spell one of them incorrectly.
There are many different styles of variable names that I've come across over the years.
The current wikipedia entry on naming conventions is fairly light...
I'd love to see a concise catalog of variable naming-conventions, identifying it by a name/description, and some examples.
If a convention is particularly favored by a certain platform community, that would be worth noting, too.
I'm turning this into a community wiki, so please create an answer for each convention, and edit as needed.
The best naming convention set that I've seen is in the book "Code Complete" Steve McConnell has a great section in there about naming conventions and lots of examples. His examples run through a number of "best practices" for different languages, but ultimately leave it up to the developer, dev manager, or architect to decide the specific action.
PEP8 is the style guide for Python code that is part of the standard library which is relatively influential in the Python community. For bonus points, in addition to covering the naming conventions used by the Python standard library, it provides an overview of naming conventions in general.
According to PEP8: variables, instance variables, functions and methods in the standard library are supposed to use lowercase words separated by underscores for readability:
foo
parse_foo
a_long_descriptive_name
To distinguish a name from a reserved word, append an underscore:
in_
and_
or_
Names that are weakly private (not imported by 'from M import *') start with a single underscore. Names whose privacy is enforced with name mangling start with double underscores.:
_some_what_private
__a_slightly_more_private_name
Names that are Python 'special' methods start and end with double underscores:
__hash__ # hash(o) = o.__hash__()
__str__ # str(o) = o.__str__()
Sun published a list of variable name conventions for Java here. The list includes conventions for naming packages, classes, interfaces, methods, variables, and constants.
The section on variables states
Except for variables, all instance, class, and class constants are in mixed case with a lowercase first letter. Internal words start with capital letters. Variable names should not start with underscore _ or dollar sign $ characters, even though both are allowed.
Variable names should be short yet meaningful. The choice of a variable name should be mnemonic- that is, designed to indicate to the casual observer the intent of its use. One-character variable names should be avoided except for temporary "throwaway" variables. Common names for temporary variables are i, j, k, m, and n for integers; c, d, and e for characters.
Some examples include
int i;
char c;
float myWidth;
Whatever your naming convention is, it usually do not allow you to easily distinguish:
instance (usually private) variable
local variables (used as parameters or local to a function)
I use a naming convention based on a the usage of indefinite article (a, an, some) for local variables, and no article for instance variables, as explained in this question about variable prefix.
So a prefix (either my way, or any other prefix listed in that question) can be one way of refining variable naming convention.
I know your question is not limited on variables, I just wanted to point out that part of naming convention.
There is, the "Java Programmers Phrasebook" by Einar Hoest.
He analysed the grammatical structure of method names together with the structure of the method bodies, and collected information such as:
add-[noun]-* These methods often have parameters and create objects.
They very rarely return field values.
The phrase appears in practically all
applications.
etcetera ... collected from hundreds of open-source projects.
For more background information, please refer to his SLE08 paper.