Re: RFC: Perl Second-Best Practices

In certain circumstances I like very short variable names. For example in a loop where the variable is used many times as the topic, and I want the eye to be drawn to the methods. To me:

for my $e ( @episodes ) {
  $e->method_one;
  $e->method_two;
  $e->method_three;
}
[download]

is clearer than:

for my $episode ( @episodes ) {
  $episode->method_one;
  $episode->method_two;
  $episode->method_three;
}
[download]

However my coworkers don't seem to like it, so I'm going to try and change.

update: s/@episode/@episodes/ in second example.

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Re^2: RFC: Perl Second-Best Practices by duff (Parson) on Dec 19, 2005 at 21:48 UTC
I tend to do the same thing myself, but only in places where it isn't likely to cause confusion. For instance, if your loop had lots of other one-letter variables or if there were several that all started with "e", noticing the `$e` might be difficult. duff	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: RFC: Perl Second-Best Practices by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Dec 26, 2005 at 12:16 UTC
That’s not a second-best practice at all, particularly if the loop variable just iterates over a well-named array or a (really) self-explanatory expression. F.ex., I’d rewrite `foreach my $index ( 0 .. $#somearray ) { wibble( $index, wubble( $somearray[ $index ] ) ); }` to use `$i` instead. Length is not a goal for naming variables; choosing them so the code is easier to read is. That means a name needs to be long and descriptive if the variable’s scope is large, but conversely also that it should be shorter for a more tightly scoped variable. Picking one-letter identifiers for loop variables on short loops helps readability. (Of course, if the list expression is actually very complex, you will probably want to use a longer name to describe what the expression means. Naming things is a complex craft.) Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply] [d/l]