[GRASS-dev] [GRASS GIS] #2409: last call for options keys consolidation

[GRASS GIS]

#2409: last call for options keys consolidation
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 Reporter:  martinl               |       Owner:  grass-dev@…              
     Type:  task                  |      Status:  new                      
 Priority:  blocker               |   Milestone:  7.0.0                    
Component:  Default               |     Version:  unspecified              
 Keywords:  standardized options  |    Platform:  Unspecified              
      Cpu:  Unspecified           |  
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Comment(by glynn):

 Replying to [comment:81 hcho]:

 > I don't think it's a good idea to have to type an underscore before
 certain option names in Python or possibly other languages and we could
 avoid such annoying/inconsistent situations by naming elements more
 carefully.

 There are two reasons why an option name cannot be used in Python. One is
 if it doesn't conform to the syntax for an identifier (e.g. starts with a
 digit). The other is if it is a reserved word (e.g. "from").

 Avoiding the first case is simple enough. A requirement that option names
 begin with a letter and consist solely of letters, digits and underscores
 will ensure conformance with the identifier syntax for any common
 language.

 The second one is more awkward, as different languages have different sets
 of reserved words. The only real constant is that many of them are quite
 common words which would frequently be an ideal choice for an option name.

 I'm not sure that we should reject such names simply because they can't be
 used as a variable/parameter/etc name in a specific language without a
 tweak such as adding an underscore (or changing case; now that option
 names are limited to lower-case, having grass.script.make_command() force
 each name to lower case would be feasible).

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2409#comment:83>
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