On Sun, 6 Aug 2006 21:23:01 -0500, Dean Kukral <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

According to my Borland C++ V5 documentation (admittedly old), although there is
no C/C++ limitation on the length of identifiers, Borland C++ V5 only used the
first 32 characters.  (That is, for two identifiers to be considered different,
there must be a difference in the first 32 characters.)  His compiler
documentation should provide this information and learning how to "look it up",
that is learning how to use your documentation sources, is part of learning to
program.

I'd also suggest that variable names be descriptive of the information they
represent (not the data values of that information), start with a lower case
letter and avoid underscores(eg. myNumber).  Save underscores for constants
(using all capital letters (MY_NUMBER).  Oh, and try to avoid two names that
only differ by case.

>I don't recall any such limitation in C (although it has been a while). 
>However, the compiler that you use to translate the C code into the machine 
>code most likely has some kind of limitation;  it would vary from compiler 
>to compiler.  So, why doesn't he just check it out for himself??  He can 
>write a basic "Hello, World" type of program and include variables with 
>different name lengths and see what his compiler will accept and not accept.
>
>Dean Kukral
>
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Frederick Navarro" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 8:32 PM
>Subject: [PCSOFT] A 12 year old question....
>
>
>I was asked by my nephew with such a silly question, but from an innocent
>mind, for me,  its quite valid.  He is studying C programming language and
>for members here who are programmers, maybe I could ask any of your input on
>this question.  The question is,
>
>Does C or C++ have a limit/max capacity of the number of characters to be
>used for its variable name?  Take note, he is referring the variable name,
>not the max value of the data type.  For example, *"int My_Number"* declares
>My_Number to be of integer data type which can hold values between -32767 to
>+32766 more or less only.  But his question is for the variable name, which
>I just answered that it doesn't make any sense making a variable name say,
>with more than 50 characters.  He simply said, "Yeah, I understand.  But
>just for the sake of information, is there such a limit?".  And this time I
>was left hanging.  Thanks for your thoughts.
>
>
>Frederick Navarro
*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Harry Lichtbach
Evergreen Valley College
San Jose, CA, USA

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