Development : Anti-Hungarian Notation

Whilst cutting code I employ a coding style, which I enforce, whereby I output the scope of the variable being used with a prefix.

"l_" for Local
"m_" for Member
"c_" for constant
"e_" for enum

And so forth, for static, parameter and a couple of others.  I also allow compounds of these, so a static constant would be:

"sc_"

This is useful in many languages, and imperative in those which are not type strict, such as Python.

Some confuse this with "Hungarian Notation", it's not.  Hungarian notation is the practice of prefixing a type notification to the variable name, for example "an integer called count" might be "iCount".

I have several problems with anyone using Hungarian Notation, and argue against it thus. With modern code completion and IDE lookup tools this is really not needed, with useful and meaningful naming of your variables the type is not needed and finally there are multiple types with the same possible meaning... i.e. "bool", "BYTE" and "std::bitset" are they all 'b'?  What about signing notation, so you compound "unsigned long" as "ul" to the name?

It all gets rather messy, a good name is enough.

However, the scope of the variable might change, the scope might not be enforced, and in none strict languages you might have a variable go out of scope and then automatically re-create the value with a blank value, if you don't follow your scopes.

Therefore I can justify my usage and enforcement of this coding standard.

What I can't stand however is when someone listens to my explaining this, they read my coding standards document, they even go as far as having me reject their code during peer review for these reasons, and then they dismiss my comment with the "it's just Hungarian Notation"... Scope is not type, and type does not define scope, don't be fooled!

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