I'll agree that memory and type issues are more of a barrier, but the variable naming is just convention of the programmer. There is a lot of legacy code where

I'll agree that memory and type issues are more of a barrier, but the variable naming is just convention of the programmer. There is a lot of legacy code where brevity in naming was emphasized, but that was just the convention of the time, nothing inherent in the language. it doesn't need to be that way. Your example looks like completely valid C code to me (except for the lack of semi-colon).