std.locale

[Georg Wrede]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Christopher Wright wrote:
 >> Georg Wrede wrote:
>>> -- All very nice, but no cigar. That's about as smart as letting 
>>> people define *unlimited* length variable names!)
>>
>> I recently dealt with a programming language that specified a limit of 
>> 63 characters for identifier names. This wouldn't have been a 
>> significant problem, except that I was generating code automatically, 
>> and some of my identifiers were over 90 characters. Identifier length 
>> limits are evil, unless they're ridiculously large (C#, I think, 
>> limits identifiers to 4096 characters).
> 
> As soon as you put in a limit on identifier name length, sooner or later 
> you'll get a bug report on it.
> 
> For example, C++ can be compiled to C code. C++ templates encode their 
> entire state into the template instance identifier, and these can easily 
> reach 10,000 characters or more. So if your C compiler has a length 
> limit on identifiers, then C++ templates become severely limited.
> 
> Another thing to consider is it's actually *more* work to put a limit 
> on, where you have to document it, explain it, detect it, diagnose it, 
> recover from it, than if you just make it unlimited.
> 
> There are really only 3 numbers in computer programming: 0, 1, and 
> unlimited. I always chuckle when I see an ad for like, an editor, that 
> says "up to 5 files open at once!".

I take it back.