UCBerkeleySETI / turbo_seti

turboSETI -- python based SETI search algorithm.

Home Page:http://turbo-seti.readthedocs.io

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Confusing variable names and parameter comments cause needless distraction.

texadactyl opened this issue · comments

And it makes maintaining the source code quite difficult!

In the find_doppler subdirectory, the source code is rampant with vague and confusing variable names. For example, important metadata (not the spectra data itself) is tagged as "d", "data_obj", and "data_list". Also, there are FITS metadata names that are tags of variables that are set once and never referenced again.

Also, in the beginning of search_coarse_channel, there were multiple unnecessary assignments from object fields since the object fields could have been used directly.

The find_doppler folder and one of the test programs (test_turbo_seti.py) require updating.

Fixing this issue does not fully address the report from issue #98 - for example:

  • The FITS metadata names are still there although some were useless and hence removed.
  • The use of tdwidth could be replaced with fftlen since one if its term factors, shoulder_size, is set to 0 and never changes (should be a parameter?).