Long-name/short-name complexity

[Ben Pfaff]

Hi John.  In working on the MATCH FILES command I incidentally
ran into the new code for handling long variable names.  It seems
needlessly complex to me to maintain both a long name and a short
name for each variable.  Is there a good reason to do so?  I
don't see any evidence in the Syntax Reference Guide for SPSS
12.0 that SPSS keeps anything similar around.

I would prefer to keep a single `name' member, which would be of
flexible length and retain the original capitalization, and then
where necessary (e.g. for SAVE and EXPORT) devise an equivalent
8-character name.

(The immediate problem that I'm encountering is that
dict_rename_var() doesn't update both short and long names, but
that is in my opinion only a symptom of the increased
complexity.)

I am willing to write and test this change.  I think it should go
into 0.4.0, unless you have some serious objections.

Ben
-- 
"Welcome to the Slippery Slope. Here is your handbasket.
 Say, can you work 70 hours this week?"
--Ron Mansolino