Re: "Redundant" ne "Bad"

in reply to "Redundant" ne "Bad"
in thread the "@" indicates plural hence "s" is redundant

At first, I was obdurately convinced that this is the only "correct" way to think of array naming. The author's rep may have influenced my conviction slightly ;) But on the drive home tonight it suddenly dawned on me that there really is something to what princepawn is saying, something I couldn't see or understand at first. Consider:

a murder of crows
a surfeit of skunks
a bag of potatoes

You wouldn't pluralize 'murder' or 'surfeit' if you were referring to just one collective of crows or skunks. Stated another way and to further explain what I think princepawn means is 'it's the potatoes that gets the plural 's' not the thing holding them.' It's sort of a reverse synecdoche that leads us to pluralize the array name.

Funny how I feel no compulsion to pluralize the array name when I actually use the word 'array' in it:

@myArray = qw(crow skunk soldier);
@codeArray = (&get_code(3,500));
my @bigAssArray = qw(donkey mule burro);
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That said, I personally cannot shake the readability of using pluralized array names and will most likely continue to do so unless, of course, I'm using some crazy English to C translator that can't distinguish what I mean from what I say ;)

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Re: Re: "Redundant" ne "Bad" by Juerd (Abbot) on Oct 31, 2002 at 08:34 UTC
Funny how I feel no compulsion to pluralize the array name when I actually use the word 'array' in it. I never use the word 'array' in an array name. It's completely redundant. The same goes for hashes and scalars: I never have %function_hash or $username_scalar. I do use 'array' and 'hash' to name references. If you read `$array` in my code, you can be sure it's a reference to an array. Some people use `$arrayref` or even `$array_reference`, but 'ref' is useless information, imho, because a scalar simply cannot be an array. (Okay, I'm ignoring overloading now) - Yes, I reinvent wheels. - Spam: Visit eurotraQ.	[reply]

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Re: Re: "Redundant" ne "Bad"
by Juerd (Abbot) on Oct 31, 2002 at 08:34 UTC

Funny how I feel no compulsion to pluralize the array name when I actually use the word 'array' in it.

I never use the word 'array' in an array name. It's completely redundant. The same goes for hashes and scalars: I never have %function_hash or $username_scalar.

I do use 'array' and 'hash' to name references. If you read $array in my code, you can be sure it's a reference to an array. Some people use $arrayref or even $array_reference, but 'ref' is useless information, imho, because a scalar simply cannot be an array. (Okay, I'm ignoring overloading now)

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
- Spam: Visit eurotraQ.

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