From -6578489824964590027 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f78e5,684a204d7f01151,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-08-30 21:15:05 PST Return-Path: X-Authentication-Warning: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU: fjh set sender to devnull@stump.algebra.com using -f Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!comp-std-cpp-robomod!not-for-mail X-Robomod: STUMP, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) Delivered-To: std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu From: agriff@tin.it (Andrea Griffini) Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: C++0X: this-> and member naming convention Message-ID: <3d6f113c.1181304@news.tin.it> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@tin.it X-Trace: news1.tin.it 1030690394 80.116.57.237 (Fri, 30 Aug 2002 08:53:14 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 08:53:14 MET DST Organization: TIN Approved: Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 23:10:54 CST Lines: 37 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.std.c++:13519 After reading a few messages about the pros and cons of using "this->" syntax to access members from inside a method and about a good naming convention for members (m_..., ..._) I've been thinking to a simple syntax extension I implemented in a toy scripting OO language some time ago. What about having all member prefixed by just a single dot ? Looks to me that this should be very easy to implement (it was for my parser) and should offer better readability and less typing and cluttering than "this->" or other prefixes. May be the ideal would be having this syntax mandatory... but this can be implemented over time just adding it as a possibility in the next C++ standard (and even if mandated this would surely become a "warning" level diagnostic by compiler implementers for quite a while). I think that the improved readability should be worth the change... in current C++ when one finds a name that is not a local name in the scope of a method it may be a data member of the class, of any ancestor class or a global. It can be hard to discover where a name may come from. Has this been considered already ? To me the single dot prefix looks also really natural. Andrea --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. To submit articles, try just posting with ] [ your news-reader. If that fails, use mailto:std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu ] [ --- Please see the FAQ before posting. --- ] [ FAQ: http://www.jamesd.demon.co.uk/csc/faq.html ]