!ASIS Issue #042
!topic  Formal parameter naming conventions
!reference  ASIS 95
!from  Doug Smith 97-02-24
!keywords  formal parameter naming convention
!discussion

  References to "ASIS." are unnecessary in child packages. It appears
  to be necessary in many cases because of the unfortunate convention
  of using the type name for the formal parameter, as in:

  package Asis.Compilation_Units is
    function Unit_Kind (Compilation_Unit : in Asis.Compilation_Unit)
                       return Asis.Unit_Kinds;

  Formal parameter names should be specific, while the type is general.
  In this example, a more appropriate name for the formal parameter
  would be "Unit" or "of_Unit". Possibly the function would more
  appropriately be called "Kind_of" or "Kind".
  
  Unless there is compelling rationale that this convention will not
  lead to implementation problems, an alternative should be adopted
  and a guideline imposed that formal parameters not be named the same
  as the type's simple name.  

!resolution  Rejected.
!date 97-03-26
!Notes

Three ASIS implementors viewed the current convention of specifying
formal parameters as being preferred for readability purposes.

This convention was chosen for simplicity and uniformity more than
anything else.  There are no implementation problems caused by this
choice.

ASIS employs specific names for formal parameters wherever the nature
of the input is specific.  When the formal parameter can be general,
the name used matches the type name.