[nycphp-talk] Length of variable names
tedd
tedd at sperling.com
Tue Jul 3 19:17:26 EDT 2007
At 1:13 PM -0400 7/3/07, Ken Robinson wrote:
>Quoting Andy Dirnberger <dirn at dirnonline.com>:
>
>>As far as i goes, I've always assumed it was just shorthand for something
>>like index or increment. Nested for loops are often then controlled with j
>>and then k. You can use these with confidence that people will understand
>>the meaning. But if you feel more comfortable using a variable called
>>$counter than one called $i, by all means do so. There are plenty of people
>>out there who refuse to use i.
>
>The use of variable names like $i, $j, $k, etc for counters is a
>hold over from early Fortran which declared that only variables
>starting with certain letters could be integers. The first letter
>was "i". I seem to remember that only the letters i, j, l, l, m, n
>were used for integer variables, so the use quickly became a
>"standard" and it's been carried over into other languages through
>the use of examples written by old time programmers.
>
>Ken
Hey, let's watch those "old programmer" remarks, because some of us
are still around. But, you are right about the i, j, k, l, m, n
integer thing as a legacy from FORTRAN. Oh, those were the good old
days when programming was more like adventures in key punching. Where
you would drop off a large stack of IBM cards one day and then pick
up a few reams of paper the next day with all your key punching
errors.
Cheers,
tedd
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