Naming Best Practices

Other best practices

Mixing Cases

Conventions:

• snake_case,
• SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE,
• kebab-case,
• dromedaryCase /
• CamelCase.

Pick the right one (you decide what that means), stick to it.

Choosing Case

Most commonly used approach:

• have class name capitalized, use CamelCase;
• methods start with a lower case letter, use dromedaryCase.

Functional Brackets

There are established (English) naming brackets:

• init(ialize) / shut(down)
• begin / end
• start / finish
• enter / exit
• acquire / release
• lock / unlock
• get / put
• push / pop

Hence, if you have begin_foo make sure the end_foo is defined. Not finish_foo.

The above list is ordered by narrowing the scope. In other words, I find this logical:

o.init()
    o.start()
        o.push(123)
        o.pop()
    o.finish()
o.shut()

In contrast, this would alarm me:

o.push(123)
    o.start()
        o.init()
        o.finish()
    o.shut()
o.pop()

Naming Verbosity vs Scope

The smaller the scope of the identifier, the shorter it can be.

It is OK for a local variable to be called port, even p. A global variable holding the same should be descriptive, e.g. the_web_server_port.

Naming Specificity

When naming variables:

• DO use descriptive application-specific terms
• DO NOT use generic type alone

For example:

• BAD: port, address
• GOOD: app_port, ssh_port, destination_address

Watch Your Language: Noun vs Verb, Singular vs Plural

Be intentional about your language and use the nouns and verbs consistently, e.g.:

• singular noun for a class name
• plural nouns for collections
• verbs for methods and functions

Naming Predicates

Predicate is a function returning boolean value with no side-effects.

Recognizers are predicates. Suppose you have class Car defined. What should you call a car recognizer? Here are few conventions to pick from:

• is_car
• isCar
• carp as in Lisp
• car? as in Scheme

DO use consistent names for predicates.