RE: [PATCH v1 2/3] Documentation/CodingStyle: do not use data type names as variable names

From: Wang, Wei W
Date: Mon Mar 06 2023 - 06:03:30 EST


On Saturday, March 4, 2023 11:02 PM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> Wei Wang <wei.w.wang@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Observed some merged code uses "bool" as variable name. This is
> > confusion either for the reader or compilier. Add a rule to have
> > programmers avoid using data types as variable names.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Wei Wang <wei.w.wang@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > Documentation/process/coding-style.rst | 3 +++
> > 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
> > b/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
> > index 007e49ef6cec..6d7f4069d55d 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
> > +++ b/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
> > @@ -356,6 +356,9 @@ specification that mandates those terms. For new
> > specifications translate specification usage of the terminology to
> > the kernel coding standard where possible.
> >
> > +"bool", "int", "long" etc. are specific names for data types, C
> > +programmers should not use them as variable names.
>
> It seems you found one place where bool was being misused. Fixing it was
> certainly the right thing to do, but I'm not convinced we need to add clutter
> to the documentation for this.

OK. I thought people would not name it in this way. But it indeed happened,
and I don't find we have such rules officially documented anywhere.
Fine if you (or most people) think that's not necessary, though.