Naming Standards – Is It Good Practice to End a Function’s Name with a Preposition?

functionsmethodsnamingnaming-standards

I have seen examples of methods whose name ended with a preposition applying to the first (and most often only) parameters.
But other examples don't use this kind of naming convention.
Which do you think is more readable?
For example, should I make a method like this:

getColorFor(Player player)

or like this?

getColor(Player player)

In this scenario, the method would return a color that represents the player supplied as parameter.

Best Answer

If it adds meaningful clarification or fits the "ethos" ... Yes.

.NET's OrderBy() and ElementAt() might be good examples.

Personally, I like code that reads pretty much like English. It takes a ton of guesswork, hovering and digging, and arcane knowledge out of reading someone's code when it tells me unambiguously what it does.

And as far as I can tell, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Related Solutions

C# – Derived Class Method Naming

In game programming I'm pretty used to the prefix 'On' so that you can think of the base class generating an 'event' when something is about to happen.

protected override void OnInitialize() { /*code here*/ }
protected override void OnProcess() { /*code here*/ }

This is called the Template Method Pattern, by the way.

As Martin comments below, other useful 'event' prefixes include Pre and Post. In a game context you'd typically have PreUpdate OnUpdate PostUpdate.

The reason for using lowercase for the first word in a local variable (eg, employeeCount, firstName)

That naming convention is often used when people want to be able to give a variable the same name as its type. For example:

Employee employee;

Some languages even enforce that capitalization. This prevents having to use annoying variable names like MyEmployee, CurrentEmployee, EmployeeVar, etc. You can always tell if something is a type or a variable, just from the capitalization. That prevents confusion in situations like:

employee.function(); // instance method
Employee.function(); // static method

Also, in English, nouns are not generally capitalized, so you can't really claim your capitalization is "proper."

So what does that have to do with your situation? You obviously have no trouble reading your own code, but by keeping things as consistent as possible, you reduce the mental workload of anyone else needing to read your code. In coding as in writing, you adjust your style to match the readers.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – Derived Class Method Naming

The reason for using lowercase for the first word in a local variable (eg, employeeCount, firstName)

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