Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]


Groups > comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica > #3285 > unrolled thread

what's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers)

Started byAlan <alan.isaac@gmail.com>
First post2011-06-24 11:54 +0000
Last post2011-06-29 21:27 +0000
Articles 2 — 2 participants

Back to article view | Back to comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica


Contents

  what's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers) Alan <alan.isaac@gmail.com> - 2011-06-24 11:54 +0000
    Re: what's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers) Armand Tamzarian <mike.honeychurch@gmail.com> - 2011-06-29 21:27 +0000

#3285 — what's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers)

FromAlan <alan.isaac@gmail.com>
Date2011-06-24 11:54 +0000
Subjectwhat's in a name? (legal and conventional constructions of identifiers)
Message-ID<iu1tsu$9ma$1@smc.vnet.net>
I find the documentation at http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/tutorial/DefiningVariables.html
to be completely inadequate.  Is there a better place to look?

Compare http://docs.python.org/reference/lexical_analysis.html#identifiers

The main thing I want to understand is  i. what special keyboard characters are allowed, and ideally ii. what naming practices are conventional. I think the rough answer for the ASCII character set is that the $ is the only special character that is allowed, but you should not end a name with it. Is that right? (I'm aware of the camelCase convention.)

Hints that are not in the above documentation but clearly should be are: do not use underscores in variable names, do not use subscripts in variable names (perhaps with a discussion of Symbolize), and do not end a variable name with $.

Thanks,
Alan


[toc] | [next] | [standalone]


#3351

FromArmand Tamzarian <mike.honeychurch@gmail.com>
Date2011-06-29 21:27 +0000
Message-ID<iug5ce$9e0$1@smc.vnet.net>
In reply to#3285
On Jun 24, 9:54 pm, Alan <alan.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I find the documentation athttp://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/tutorial/DefiningVariables.html
> to be completely inadequate.  Is there a better place to look?
>
> Comparehttp://docs.python.org/reference/lexical_analysis.html#identifiers
>
> The main thing I want to understand is  i. what special keyboard characters are allowed, and ideally ii. what naming practices are conventional. I think the rough answer for the ASCII character set is that the $ is the only special character that is allowed, but you should not end a name with it. Is that right? (I'm aware of the camelCase convention.)
>
> Hints that are not in the above documentation but clearly should be are: do not use underscores in variable names, do not use subscripts in variable names (perhaps with a discussion of Symbolize), and do not end a variable name with $.
>
> Thanks,
> Alan

Mathematica needs to handle subscripted variables much easier given
that this is a "natural" way to define variables. I recently used
another package where it was totally natural (out of the box, no
loading packages etc.). It was quite a shock to see how further
advanced they were in this area.

Mike

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]


Back to top | Article view | comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica


csiph-web