On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 23:13 +0200, Eric Botcazou wrote: > > So, you only know it's 2 tokens once you know all of tree.def? I'm > > aware that this is just some arbitrary example, but I believe this > > actually strengthens the concern I had. > > Well, if you don't know of FIELD_DECL, you won't go very far, really.
We are discussing a general style here, not this arbitrary example. (If I am mistakenly assuming that, sorry; but then your original comparison doesn't seem to be fair because you compare a shortcut against a verbose form). So assume the general case, GET_FOO_BAR (exp). Is this about the BAR of FOO, FOO of BAR, or FOOBAR? If we have two concepts named FOOBAR for different arguments, do we need GET_FOO_BAR_THIS and GET_FOO_BAR_THAT? Point is, if there is no context that partitions items, you have to name them differently, and you get less locality and reuse when thinking about something. That's for the long tail of course, shortcuts for the most common stuff can still be used. That's at least what I was commenting on.