Redundancy in Programming Languages

[Russell Lewis]

bearophile wrote:
> (huge snip)
> ...I have nearly never fallen in [the variable name typo] trap in Python...

I write a little in PHP for my website, and I hit it *all the time*.

If you are writing a program (or a new function) from scratch, you don't 
hit it often, because you have recent memory of the names you used.  But 
when you are maintaining barely-remembered old code (as is usually my 
case on the website) it is *VERY* common.

Remind me...was that variable named "fieldOK", "fieldOk", "fieldFound",
"foundField", "field_found", or "results[fieldFound]" ?

It's even worse when you are accessing somebody else's library.  I 
recently got bit on things like:

- $_SERVER[REDRIECT_URL]  (had to change to $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI] when 
PHP version changed...but no warnings, just weird chdir() errors whenI 
used the wrong variable)
- $_SERVER[REQEUST_URI]  (typo)
- $_POST is used on some pages, $_GET on others...reads of undefined 
fields just silently return empty values
- urldecode()  (actual function name is url_decode() )

Just a few examples I hit recently.

Ofc, YMMV.