Re: [PATCH v2] Make fetch-pack a builtin with an internal API

From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
Date: Jul 9, 2007, 11:50 UTC
Message-ID: <20070709115029.GD16032@thunk.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vwsxaw2xu.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 10:39:41PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Are _identifiers with leading underscore Kosher thing to do, I
> wonder...  We do have ones with trailing ones (mostly qsort
> functions) and I think they are done that way for the sake of
> standards conformance.

_[a-z]* is kosher for file scopes or function scoping:

	http://c-faq.com/decl/namespace.html

Some Projects' coding styles prohibit use of _[a-z]* altogether, as _[_A-Z]* is reserved for C libraries and system header files, and it's simpler just to ban all identifiers begining with an underscore just on general princinpals. It's not strictly speaking necessary, however.

	       		     	    - Ted

P.S. Note that the Linux kernel does not worry about such rules; in particular, _[a-z]* is very commonly used at the global scope level, without any problems. It doesn't have to be as portable as git probably needs to be, however.