Naming schemes

We now introduce a naming scheme that should be used to define identifiers for the various entities in an ECLiPSe program. A consistent naming scheme makes it easier to maintain and modify the program, and also makes sure that contributions from different programmers can be merged without extra work. The scheme presented here is used for RiskWise.

Modules and files

Each module must have a unique name of the form [a-z][a-z_]+ . There is a one-to-one correspondence of modules and program files.

All program files in an application should be placed in a single directory, with each file named after the module it contains. The extension for ECLiPSe programs is .ecl.

Predicates

Predicate names are of form [a-z][a-z_]*[0-9]* . Underscores are used to separate words. Digits should only be used at the end of the name. Words should be English. The top-level query of an application should be named top, and should execute a default query with some valid data set. Although predicates in different modules can use the same name, this can be confusing and should be avoided. You should also avoid using the same predicate name with different arity. Although legal, this can create problems when modifying code.

Variables

Variable names are of form [A-Z_][a-zA-Z]*[0-9]* . Separate words start with capital letters. Digits should only be used at the end. Words should be English. If a variable occurs only once in a clause, then its name should start with an underscore. This marks it as a singleton variable, and stops compiler warnings about the single occurrence of a variable. If a variable occurs more than once in a clause, then its name should not start with an underscore.