Naming Conventions

The Lpp library tries to prevent name space clashes with other libraries so that it can be included with such other libraries. All the identifiers reserved for Lpp fall into one of the four following categories

1. The Lpp class and Lpp subtype class names
2. Lpp member function identifiers
3. Lpp macros
4. The rest of Lpp reserved identifiers that begin with Lpp_

In case 1 Lpp class and subtype class names are few and correspond directly with names in the Common Lisp type hierarchy except that the Lpp class names begin with a capital letter. For example: Number for the Lpp number object, Integer for the Lpp Integer object, String for the Lpp string object, etc.

In case 2 the Lpp library creates its own name space of functions that dispatch on the let type. For example list(x, y) where x and y are of type let. Generally this prevents clashes with other library names.

Lpp strives to provide the Common Lisp specified semantics and wherever possible functions are named for their Common Lisp counterparts and replacing dashes by capitalizing the first character after the dash. For example the Common Lisp function make-string becomes makeString. This was decided over replacing dashes with underscores since such identifiers with capitals would more likely be unique and, except for the prefix Lpp_, allows a whole set of user defined identifiers with underscores that can not possibly clash with Lpp identifiers. Other characters not allowed in C++ identifiers are replaced by words, so string= becomes stringEqual. In some cases this does not work in which case a reasonable alternative is chosen. For example append is an identifier used in the C++ stream operations. So the identifier listConcat was used instead of the Common Lisp specified append. Another example is the Common Lisp specified delete which is a reserved identifier in C++, so nremove is used as in "destructive remove".

In case 3 the Lpp macros reserve a small set of reserved identifiers. A mechanism is set up to redefine these per compilation unit by the programmer if a name clash happens to exist, See Redefining Predefined Names.

In case 4 all other reserved Lpp identifiers begin with Lpp_ so the user should never define a name that begins with Lpp_.