[Gnucap-devel] Hierarchical name ordering

[al davis]

As you might have observed, gnucap hierarchical names have the 
innermost name first, moving out.  It seems that most other 
simulators do the opposite.

The way it is preserves the meaning of the first letter ..
    R3.X3.X9    ..  is a resistor, keeping Spice conventions.

Spectre and Verilog do it the other way
   X9.X3.R3   ..   the first letter doesn't say what it is.
The first letter doesn't mean anything anyway.

As I recall, Spice-2 is the same as gnucap, and was another 
factor in why I did it that way.

Spice-3 prints the names another way ...
  R:3:9  ..   
this is not general enough, ..

It has been suggested to change it, and I agree.

Is it worth the effort and possible confusion to have a "option" 
so it can go either way?

Is it worth the effort and possible confusion to make the search 
(used by probe and delete) search both ways?

The coding effort is trivial.  The "effort" I refer to here is 
from a user perspective.  extra documentation, etc.

It seems to me .. the only reason to keep the existing reverse 
ordering at all (even by option) is for backward compatibility.


comments?