Identifiers¶

Identifiers carry a lot of meaning — column names, variables, package names — and Oracle's compiler is mostly indifferent to how you choose them. The rules in this section guard against the few cases where bad identifier choices break tooling, readability, or future portability.

F-1 · Identifier length ≤ 30 characters¶

Severity: WARNING

Oracle 12.2+ allows identifiers up to 128 characters, but many third-party tools, naming conventions, and DBA scripts still assume the legacy 30-char limit. Long identifiers also tend to bury intent in noise.

Bad

DECLARE
    l_a_very_long_identifier_name_that_exceeds_thirty_chars NUMBER;
BEGIN
    NULL;
END;

Good

DECLARE
    l_count NUMBER;
BEGIN
    NULL;
END;

If you really need longer names — for instance because they reflect a business glossary — disable F-1 in your rules.yaml rather than fighting the linter.

F-2 · Reserved words and built-in types as identifiers¶

Severity: WARNING

Using built-in type names like NUMBER, DATE, VARCHAR2, BLOB, or ambiguous words like LEVEL, USER, SESSION, or ROW as identifiers forces readers to mentally disambiguate every reference. It also makes quoted-identifier hacks ("NUMBER") more likely later on.

Bad

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE p_x IS
    l_date NUMBER;       -- l_date is a number?
    "NUMBER" NUMBER;     -- quoted identifier just to dodge the keyword
BEGIN
    NULL;
END;

Good

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE p_x IS
    l_hire_date DATE;
    l_amount    NUMBER;
BEGIN
    NULL;
END;

The default deny list covers the most common offenders. Extend it for your project via the forbidden-keyword YAML rule type.