three letter programming abbreviations for words

len() is so common that the shorter, less noisy, quicker to pronounce len is to be preferred over length. Unix suggests external symbols longer than six characters came along with stdio.h and ctype.h, later additions to Unix, perhaps when the earlier six-character (DEC) limit was removed. When memcpy() was coined, linkers on some systems limited the length of external symbols eight and six characters were common limits. However, common C functions that use more than 6 characters also look like alphabet soup: fprintf, strcspn, strncpy, etc. Update: Commenters point out that memcpy had to be shortened due to technical limitations restricting the length of functions to 6 characters in the old days. Let us not forget that source code is often the ultimate documentation of our ideas.Ĭredit: John Cook’s comment on G+ inspired this blog post. We make the code harder to read for those unfamiliar with the language without providing any benefit to anyone.

However, by going too far, we create a jargon. I am not opposed to a judicious use of abbreviations. Most languages seem to abbreviate Boolean as bool.

In Python, we abbreviate string to str.

PHP alone seems to get it right by using elseif. Python uses elif, saving us two key strokes. Ruby uses elsif, helpfully saving us from typing the character e.

Though most languages use the instruction if or the equivalent to indicate a conditional clause, when it comes to “else if”, designers get creative.

The expression length(array) would be clearer to most and require only three additional characters.

To query for the length of an object like an array in Python and Go, we use the len function as in len(array).

The clearer alternative memcopy requires one extra key stroke.

The C language provides the memcpy function to copy data.

The benefits are sometimes dubious in an era where most programmers commonly use meaningful variable names like M圜onnection or current_set as opposed to single letters like m or t. Programming language designers often abbreviate common function names.

Stefan Kanthak on Bit Hacking (with Go code).

Stefan Kanthal on Bit Hacking (with Go code).

Daniel Lemire on Bit Hacking (with Go code).Thom Chiovoloni on The fastest conventional random number generator that can pass Big Crush?.Bannister on Move or copy your strings? Possible performance impacts International domain names: where does lead you?.Move or copy your strings? Possible performance impacts.Science and Technology links (February 12 2023).However, you can you can sponsor my open-source work on GitHub.

Three letter programming abbreviations for words