# 2.2. Naming Conventions

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MPI-1 used informal naming conventions. In many cases, MPI-1 names for C functions are of the form Class_action_subset and in Fortran of the form CLASS_ACTION_SUBSET, but this rule is not uniformly applied. In MPI-2, an attempt has been made to standardize names of new functions according to the following rules. In addition, the C++ bindings for MPI-1 functions also follow these rules (see Section C++ Binding Issues ). C and Fortran function names for MPI-1 have not been changed.

1. In C, all routines associated with a particular type of MPI object should be of the form Class_action_subset or, if no subset exists, of the form Class_action. In Fortran, all routines associated with a particular type of MPI object should be of the form CLASS_ACTION_SUBSET or, if no subset exists, of the form CLASS_ACTION. For C and Fortran we use the C++ terminology to define the Class. In C++, the routine is a method on Class and is named MPI::Class::Action_subset. If the routine is associated with a certain class, but does not make sense as an object method, it is a static member function of the class.

2. If the routine is not associated with a class, the name should be of the form Action_subset in C and ACTION_SUBSET in Fortran, and in C++ should be scoped in the MPI namespace, MPI::Action_subset.

3. The names of certain actions have been standardized. In particular, Create creates a new object, Get retrieves information about an object, Set sets this information, Delete deletes information, Is asks whether or not an object has a certain property.

C and Fortran names for MPI-1 functions violate these rules in several cases. The most common exceptions are the omission of the Class name from the routine and the omission of the Action where one can be inferred.

MPI identifiers are limited to 30 characters (31 with the profiling interface). This is done to avoid exceeding the limit on some compilation systems.

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MPI-2.0 of July 18, 1997
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