On Mon, 17 Jan 2000, R. A. Harmon wrote:

> At 06:35 PM 1/16/00 +0100, Stefan Matthias Aust wrote:
> >
> >Also an idea.  Probably a matter of style.  What's better read?
> >
> >at:put:  -->  atXputX
> >at:put:  -->  at_put_
> >
> >Striktly speaking, both "X" and "_" and are valid selector characters
but
> >the big-X probably doesn't occur in typical programs and that's enough.
We
> >could simply double them if they happen to occur.
>
> I actually prefer underline as easier to read, but Squeak as yet doesn't
> support it in method names which is what I used the scheme for.
>
> The ANSI standard allows using the underline in method names, so we
still
> have a possible conflict using it.

Given this, I think periods (".") would be the best separator.  E.g.:

at:put:  -->  at.put.

Unlike "X" or "_", there is no possibility for conflicts, since no
Smalltalk selectors ever contain periods.  It would be "ANSI-compatible". 
Also, all filesystems should be able to support filenames with periods.

Well, actually, having a file end in a period might be a problem on some
platforms, so maybe having a suffix such as .st would be better:

at:put:  -->  at.put.st

- Doug Way
  dway at mat.net