Re: How to name variables in a program?

> Having a strong convention for naming your variables in your program
> is an important issue often overlooked.
> Can anyone point me to a good source on the web dealing with this
> issue?

Ever since I picked up the book Windows programming book by Petzold, I have
been using something called "Hungarian notation":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation

Although it is by no means a guide on picking good names for your variables,
this convention works with prefixes to indicate variable type.

When I have a local variable which is nothing more than a temporary variable
I use just the prefix, so unlike what philip states, I do get variable names
such as i and l. To give an example:

i = SomeFunction(szArg1, iArg2, iArg3);
if ( i == 0 )
...;

(note that szArg1, iArg2 and iArg3 are terrible names you should never use
in a real program)

Other conventions I use:

- every structure I define, I trail with a comment indicating the
hungarian code
- prefix global variables with g_
- prefix pointers with lp (this stands for "long pointer" and is still
reminiscent of the 16 bit Windows days)

Good luck,

--
Martijn
http://www.sereneconcepts.nl


.

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