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Hiding Context in Variable Names

• To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
• Subject: Hiding Context in Variable Names
• From: Scott Herod <sherod at picard.colorado.edu>
• Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 15:36:08 -0700

( Most people may be aware of this but since it relates to my
recent post on context names I will send it also. )

In my last post I was asking about removing context names from
printed variables.  Bruce Fast suggested a fix.  However, some
of my variables were still printed "MyPackage`Private`name".

It turned out that I used "name" as one of the dummy names in my
init.m file.  Mathematica still recorded that the variable had been
used in the Global` context and so in order to avoid confusion included
the whole context path later.

Two tricks to avoid this:

(1)  Always use good dummy names for dummy variables.  dummyx
    comes to mind.

(2)  Use lower case letters as the first letter in a dummy name and
    make the last line in your init.m file

         Remove["@"];

    Be careful that you don't create something in your startup
    file that begins with a lower case letter that you want to keep.
    Or you could create it after the Remove statement.


Scott Herod
Applied Mathematics
University of Colorado, Boulder
(sherod at newton.colorado.edu)