Re: [boost] Enum naming conventions

14 Apr 2008


      ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul A Bristow" <pbristow@hetp.u-net.com>
To: <boost@lists.boost.org>
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: [boost] Enum naming conventions
...
...
-----Original Message-----
From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org
[mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Maciej Sobczak
Sent: 14 April 2008 08:25
To: boost@lists.boost.org
Subject: [boost] Enum naming conventions
Hi,
Is there an established naming convention for enum names in Boost?
I don't see anything truly consistent.
Consider this:
enum eGrays { eBlack, eDarkGray, eGray, eLightGray, eWhite };
Is this commonly accepted by the Boost community?
If not, what alternative naming for the above would you propose?
Jake Voytko faced a similar, but more complicated difficulty with naming 
SVG colors
// -----------------------------------------------------------------
 // Deals with colors that have special names. The reason that the
 // underscore separator convention does not match the normal Boost format
 // is that these names that are specified by the SVG standard.
 // http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/types.html#ColorKeywords
 // tan is also renamed to tanned to avoid clash with function tan in 
math.h
 // -----------------------------------------------------------------
 enum svg_color_constant
 {
   aliceblue, antiquewhite, aqua, aquamarine, azure, beige,
   bisque, black, blanchedalmond, blue, blueviolet, brown,
<... snipped>
   skyblue, slateblue, slategray, slategrey, snow, springgreen,
   steelblue,
<and things got worse when we got to tan!
   // tan,
// Note that tan would clash with geometric tan in math.h!
global names are evil!
tanned,    teal, thistle, tomato, turquoise, violet,
...
I don't think Boost have even *banned* camel mode - just deprecated it.
So
enum grays { gray_black, gray_dark, gray, gray_light...}
or
enum grays {black_gray, dark_gray, gray_gray, light_gray...}
would both seem only a little longer and *much* easier to read?
Or is it a stronger 'this is an enum' marker that you are trying to 
achieve?
Paul
In C++0x  enuma have its own namespace.
why not emulate this with namespace. There is a lot of enums in boost 
following this.

namespace grays {
 enum type { black, dark, gray, light...};
}

The declaration of a variable is a little bit artificial, ...
    grays::type v;

The enumeration follows the C++0x syntax.
    v= grays::back;

When moving to C++0x you could do a replacement of grays::type and declare 
it as before
    enum type { black, dark, gray, light...};
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Re: [boost] Enum naming conventions

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