Macro naming best practice?

Question

Is there a preferred or generally accepted idiom for naming user defined macros? I notice that in the change from Tufte 3.5.0 to 3.5.2, for example, the names of the debugging macros have change, for example from

\TufteDebugInfoNL

to

\@tufte@debug@info@noline

Does this correspond to some agreed to practice?

Don't think there is agreed standard, but using the prefix @tufte (but just as good as Tufte) is a good idea to help avoid name collisions, and the use of @ signs makes it even less likely to have name collisions as that requires special handling in regular code (i.e., \makeatletter ... \makeatother). — Peter Grill, Mar 16 '12 at 00:39

David Carlisle · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-20T19:00:30.953

52

LaTeX does try to encourage a naming scheme

Document level commands (\section) lowercase.

Package interface commands (\DeclareTextCommandDefault) CamelCase.

Package or kernel internal commands (\@text@composite@) lower@case@with@.

Expl3 programming layer commands (\cs_new:NN) module_name_words:argspec.

TeX primitives (\expandafter) lowercase.

Mostly this convention is not enforced, and of course one might notice that the top and bottom layer using the same convention makes enforcing anything difficult. LaTeX3 addresses this by renaming all the commands at the bottom layer.

So the command you mention has changed from using a "package interface name" to an "internal name" but whether that is appropriate in this case I couldn't judge, not knowing that class.

edited Feb 20 '21 at 19:00

answered Mar 16 '12 at 01:19

David Carlisle

757,742

2

How does that work out, to just decide that all commands on the bottom layer are to be rewritten? It feels like that means a lot of rewriting of packages and classes. – StrawberryFieldsForever Jun 15 '12 at 09:26
I think "renaming" in this case means defining aliases. – marczellm Sep 06 '13 at 17:01
@marczellm defining aliases and undefining the original names – David Carlisle Nov 11 '13 at 22:21
1

@DavidCarlisle Can you undefine a primitive? – marczellm Nov 11 '13 at 22:23
6

@marczellm \let\def\undefined – David Carlisle Nov 11 '13 at 22:27
@marczellm Try \tt\meaning\par and \tt\meaning\bye in plain and in LaTeX ;) – yo' Feb 20 '21 at 19:15
@yo' not sure why you mention \bye though, that's not an undefined primitive it is simply undefined. – David Carlisle Feb 20 '21 at 19:17
Ah right, yeah, got it all messed up, sorry. – yo' Feb 20 '21 at 19:54

Macro naming best practice?

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