Naming Conventions

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Naming Conventions

The chapter on naming conventions gives a suggested convention for commands—commands are relatively scarce and the end user may possibly see their names. Names should be meaningful and consistent with the conventions used in CL. The following is a summary of the convention:

For example:

Note the following points when naming commands:

Names should not conflict with any existing OS/400 commands, nor with any commands that IBM may introduce into OS/400 at a future date. For this reason, a prefix letter should be used.
Use a "verb-object syntax": the command name should consist of VERB+NOUN or VERB+ADJ+NOUN, for instance, CRTOBJ, RTVCLSRC, YCPYMNU. There should always be a verb.
Use existing CL mnemonics wherever possible, both for verbs (for example, CRT, DSP, CPY) and for objects (for example, PGM, OBJ, DTAARA). A complete list of keywords can be found in the appendix of the Control Language Reference Manual for both machines.
Follow the distinctions made by OS/400 in its use of pairs of antonymous mnemonics, for example:

Antonym — Antonym

Description

CRT — DLT

ADD — RMV

To create/delete an entity

To add/remove data within an entity

STR — END

STR — TRM

To start/end a function

To start terminate a process

SND — RCV

HLD — RLS

To send/receive data

To hold/release a function

SAV — RST

To save/restore a function

OPN — CLO

ALC — DLC

GRT — RVK

CHG — RTV

To open/close a function

To allocate/de-allocate

To grant/revoke a function

To set/retrieve an attribute

Preserve the distinction made in OS/400 between verbs that operate on objects and verbs that operate on the contents of objects:

Object	Internal
CRT	ADD
DLT	RMV
CHG	EDT
DUP	CPY

Preserve the distinction made in OS/400 between working interactively on a list of entities (WRK verb) and working interactively on an individual entity (EDT or STR verb).
Follow the distinction made in OS/400 between operating on an object and operating on the description of an object; for instance, DSPSBS versus DSPSBSD.