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Re: what's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers)

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg119877] Re: what's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers)
  • From: Alan <alan.isaac at gmail.com>
  • Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 07:32:22 -0400 (EDT)
  • Reply-to: comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica at googlegroups.com

> http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/tutorial/BasicObjects.html

Thank you. That provides extra info, which imo should be linked from the DefiningVariables documentation.  I note that it does not define "letter-like form" and still does not warn users not to use underscores in variable names (which is a known common mistake of newcomers).

In terms of my question, it also does not (directly) address the question of convention that I raised. It is often desirable to break names into parts with a special symbol. (E.g., where many languages would use an underscore.) I'm guessing from what I've seen that users most often introduce symbols of the form prta$prtb. An alternative practice (that I actually have not seen in use, but I'm a neophyte) would be to use contexts: prta`prtb.  I find the latter a bit harder to read as a single name; are there other considerations?

Thanks,
Alan


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