Difference between revisions of "Naming convention (programming)"

Revision as of 07:49, 3 September 2015

In computer programming, a naming convention is a set of rules for choosing names. For more general usage, see Naming convention.

Naming conventions are useful when choosing the character sequence to be used for identifiers which denote:

Reasons for using a naming convention (as opposed to allowing programmers to choose any character sequence) include:

To reduce the effort needed to read and understand source code
To enable code reviews be able to focus on more important issues than arguing over syntax and naming standards.
To enable code quality review tools be able to focus their reporting mainly on significant issues other than syntax and style preferences.
To enhance source code appearance (for example, by disallowing overly long names or unclear abbreviations).

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
-- Phil Karlton

This quote (much-repeated-with-variations) may misquoted or mis-attributed. (See TwoHardThings by Martin Fowler.)

The term naming convention has a similar meaning in other fields.

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 Naming conventions are useful when choosing the [[character sequence]] to be used for [[Identifier|identifiers]] which denote:
-* [[Variable (computer science)|variables]]
+* [[Variable (computer science)|Variables]]
-* [[Data type|Data types
+* [[Data type|Data types]]
 * [[Function (computer science)|functions]]
 * Other entities in [[source code]] and [[Software documentation|software documentation]].