David Abrahams wrote:
Douglas Paul Gregor <gregod@cs.rpi.edu> writes:
Yes, actually. Part of my weighting scheme has to do with how often I need to type it. With filesystem, for instance, I either use it very sparingly (and don't mind the typing), or I'm using it like mad and will go with an alias no matter what. With "std", I need it all the bloody time for everything, so it better be short. (Kind of like "ls" or "cd").
That's basically my philosophy. Couple that with a belief that the use of indcphrble abbrevs should be a conscious choice on each programmer's part, and not forced upon them by cruel or lazy library authors <wink>, and I think you can understand why I don't like boost::algo or boost::fs by default. If I could think of a better alternative I might say the same about boost::mpl.
I hate 'algo' too. :-) But you are missing the point. Abbreviations are only introduced as namespace (module, unit) names. A program typically uses hundreds, if not thousands, of identifiers, but the number of namespaces/modules/units is usually less than, say, 20. Furthermore, a namespace name is rarely used on its own; it only provides context to a non-abbreviated identifier. And if a long namespace name is using-directive-d away, it's arguably worse to have no context than a two-or-three-letter abbreviated, but well known, context. I even suspect that if you conduct a proper scientific experiment to compare the readability of boost::filesystem::directory_iterator or boost::regex_match against boost::fs::directory_iterator or boost::rx::match, the results may not support your "long names are obviously more readable" viewpoint. But that's another story. Cognitive sciences are probably off-topic for Boost. :-)