Identifier Style

Picking good identifier names is an art not quickly mastered, but here are some helpful hints(2):

• Most of the time, construct identifiers from full words joined by dashes.
• Use abbreviations sparingly, for words you use frequently within a package. As always, be consistent if you do so.
• Identifier names should grow longer as their scope grows longer: Identifiers local to a function can have much shorter names than those used throughout a package.
• Identifier names should grow longer as their use grows less frequent: Constantly-used identifiers can have much shorter names than those used only once in a blue moon.
• Global variables in a package should have names beginning and ending with asterisks. This is a CommonLisp tradition which is even more important in MUF, which uses identical syntax for global functions and variables. (Avoid global variables where practical, but don't be fanatic about it.)
• Global constants in a package do not get asterisks around their names.
• It is often a good idea to pick names of the form verb-noun: printList find-user sort-mail and so forth.

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