Avoid encodings: Hungarian Notation

Avoid encodings: Hungarian Notation

Examples of Hungarian Notation:

• lAccountNum : variable is a long integer ("l");
• arru8NumberList : variable is an array of unsigned 8-bit integers ("arru8");
• bReadLine(bPort,&arru8NumberList) : function with a byte-value return code.
• strName : Variable represents a string ("str") containing the name, but does not specify how that string is implemented.
• rwPosition : variable represents a row ("rw");
• usName : variable represents an unsafe string ("us"), which needs to be "sanitized" before it is used (e.g. see code injection and cross-site scripting for examples of attacks that can be caused by using raw user input)
• szName : variable is a zero-terminated string ("sz"); this was one of Simonyi's original suggested prefixes.
• pX is a pointer to another type X; this contains very little semantic information.
• d is a prefix meaning difference between two values; for instance, dY might represent a distance along the Y-axis of a graph, while a variable just called y might be an absolute position. This is entirely semantic in nature.
• sz is a null- or zero-terminated string. In C, this contains some semantic information because it is not clear whether a variable of type char* is a pointer to a single character, an array of characters or a zero-terminated string.
• w marks a variable that is a word. This contains essentially no semantic information at all, and would probably be considered Systems Hungarian.
• b marks a byte, which in contrast to w might have semantic information, because in C the only byte-sized data type is the char, so these are sometimes used to hold numeric values. This prefix might clear ambiguity between whether the variable is holding a value that should be treated as a character or a number.

Examples related to type:

• bBusy : boolean
• chInitial : char
• cApples : count of items
• dwLightYears : double word (Systems)
• fBusy : flag (or float)
• nSize : integer (Systems) or count (Apps)
• iSize : integer (Systems) or index (Apps)
• fpPrice: floating-point
• dbPi : double (Systems)
• pFoo : pointer
• rgStudents : array, or range
• szLastName : zero-terminated string
• u16Identifier : unsigned 16-bit integer (Systems)
• u32Identifier : unsigned 32-bit integer (Systems)
• stTime : clock time structure
• fnFunction : function name