Douglas Paul Gregor wrote:
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Peter Dimov wrote:
But the question is why (and the name is boost::fs). Claiming the identifier 'fs' in the boost namespace isn't more evil than claiming the identifier 'ref' or 'type' or 'bind'... or 'function', if you will.
I'm not going to defend "type", because I'm not thrilled that it's there. As for the others, only "ref" is an abbreviation, but we're knocking something that's huge ("reference_wrapper", 17 characters) and is often used several times in one line of code down to 3 characters.
I think it's a fuzzy line in the sand, so all I really know is that I do like "ref" and don't like "fs" :)
Yes, is seems that it comes down to personal preference. Dave likes to say filesystem, and you don't like fs. Out of curiosity, do you like 'std'? The reason I prefer short namespace names (and I'm very glad that the committee decided to place the library in 'std' and not 'standard' or 'standard_library') is because I want to keep my identifiers fully qualified, if possible. However I apparently lack the mental discipline required to repeatedly type boost::filesystem::directory_iterator, std::string::size_type, std::string::npos, or std::vector<X>::size_type (much less like it :-) ). I believe that there is a (subjective) threshold that shouldn't be crossed, or the programmer just "goes unqualified". Now, it's well known that many programmers don't tolerate namespaces at all. Others, apparently, are content with longer namespace names if this aids clarity. But I somewhat suspect that the majority are like me, they'll keep using qualified names until the library offers them an excuse to cut corners. So I'd rather not give them that excuse. Just my opinion, of course. :-)