Avoid encodings: Hungarian Notation
De Basef
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
