TITLE: simple, "intuitive" member variable naming

(Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++.moderated, 5 Feb 97)

[ I usually avoid postings involving naming conventions, since
  they usually are Hungarian-notationalists versus everyone
  else. Here is a simple, non-obtrusive convention. -adc ] 


KUEHL: kuehl@uzwil.informatik.uni-konstanz.de (Dietmar Kuehl)

>> >BTW, I can't really understand why there is so much interest in symbols
>> >with leading underscore: I find them plain ugly and would not use them
>> >anyway (accept when I would implement parts of the standard C/C++
>> >library, of course ...).

[snip]

>> The use of a leading _ is an attempt to put member variables into
>> a private namespace which helps to avoid conflicts with other names.

[ The obvious side benefit is a consistent naming convention makes it
  painless to recognize member variables in other people's code. -adc ]

[snip]


APPLETON: appleton@chiefs.northbrook.aieg.mot.com (Brad Appleton)

I came up with my own little convention for this that I strongly
prefer to the "underscore" solution. I use a prefix of "my" on
data-members. For example:

        class SomeObject {
        private:
           int        myLength;
           ThingList  myThings;
        };

Its almost as brief as using a single underscore, and is much more
textually informative and intuitive IMHO. I tend to use a prefix
of "our" for static class data-members.