[Csnd-dev] language cleanup...

It would be nice to iron out some inconsistencies in the language before
releasing Csound 7. One of these is the scattershot approach to opcode
names. Right now we have lowerCamelCase, snake_case, snake+camel case, and
the traditional flatcase. It would be nice to choose one, create aliases
for all existing opcodes (if this is doable that is), and mark the others
as deprecated.

Another thing that came up yesterday in a different discussion is the
number of version 2 opcodes, diskin2, flooper2, etc. We can now easily
overload opcodes, which gives us the option of removing the version 2
variants and overloading the originals instead, although we’d need to audit
the opcodes first to see if they all have different parameter signatures.

Something else that was mentioned was the use of uppercase for booleans. bi,
bk, booli, boolk, etc., all seem like better fits. Another long-standing
inconsistency is the uppercase S for strings. If I’m not mistaken, we could
finally change this to :s and keep it in line with other variable types.

Consistency has a real impact on usability and teaching, making code easier
to read and maintain. I think it would be great to try to address this now.
I don't mind doing most of the donkey work. We just need to come to some
kind of agreement.

Rory.


p.s. I'm posting this to the dev-list, but I think this is something the
end-users might also like to have some input on...