Using a dot "." in defining/scoping variables

Question

I've always felt it was a best practice to scope EVERY CF
variable and still do. However, a new co-worker to me feels that
using a DOT in variable names could cause problems. I completely
disagree but would like others opinions. To me scoping variables is
absolutely a best practice.
She specifically referred to the article below but to me the
point of this article was about using "primitive" variables such
as: "var1.var2.var3".
http://www.coldfusionmuse.com/index.cfm/2006/3/14/dot.operator
Looking forward to others opinion especially seasoned CF
folks from Adobe.

Answer 1

NUHuskers65 wrote:
> I've always felt it was a best practice to scope EVERY
CF variable and still
> do. However, a new co-worker to me feels that using a
DOT in variable names
> could cause problems. I completely disagree but would
like others opinions.
> To me scoping variables is absolutely a best practice.
>
I think this co-worker misunderstood the point of that
article as
surmised in its last paragraph, and I quote:
"The solution is to avoid using dotted notation for primitive
variables.
Only use dotted notation for variable naming when you intend
to create a
structure."
All variable scopes in modern, aka MX, aka Java Based,
ColdFusion are
structures. You use the dot [.] character to specify the keys
of
structures. So you are doing what you are supposed to do.
This article refers to older versions of ColdFusion where all
the
variable scopes where *not* structures and you could get away
with dots
in your primitive, i.e. non-structure, variable names. It
also tells
how one can still do this by using array notation.
This is a bad practice and should be avoided for the very
reason that in
modern ColdFusion, dots are meant to be interpreted as
structures. It
does not say to not even use dots for these structures where
they are
meant to be used.