Naming convention (programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:44, 26 January 2023

Revision as of 18:42, 27 January 2023

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====Delimiter-separated words====

One approach is to [[delimiter|delimit]] separate words with a [[alphanumeric|nonalphanumeric]] character. The two characters commonly used for this purpose are the [[hyphen]] ("-") and the [[underscore]] ("_"); e.g., the two-word name "<code>two words</code>" would be represented as "<code>two-words</code>" or "<code>two_words</code>".

One approach is to [[delimiter|delimit]] separate words with a [[alphanumeric|nonalphanumeric]] character. The two characters commonly used for this purpose are the [[hyphen]] ("-") and the [[underscore]] ("_"); e.g., the two-word name "<code>two words</code>" would be represented as "<code>two-words</code>" or "<code>two_words</code>". The hyphen is used by nearly all programmers writing [[COBOL]] (1959), [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]] (1970), and [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] (1958); it is also common in [[Unix]] for commands and packages, and is used in [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS]].<ref>{{cite web |title = CSS reference |website = [[Mozilla Developer Network]] |url = https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference |access-date=2016-06-18}}</ref> This convention has no standard name, though it may be referred to as ''lisp-case'' or ''COBOL-CASE'' (compare ''Pascal case''), ''kebab-case'', ''brochette-case'', or other variants.<ref>{{Cite web | title = StackOverflow – What's the name for snake_case with dashes? | url = https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11273282/whats-the-name-for-snake-case-with-dashes }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | title = Programmers – If this is camelCase what-is-this? | url = http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104468/if-this-is-camelcase-what-is-this }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | title = Camel_SNAKE-kebab | website = [[GitHub]] | url = https://github.com/qerub/camel-snake-kebab | date = September 2019 }}</ref><ref>[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnderscoreVersusCapitalAndLowerCaseVariableNaming UnderscoreVersusCapitalAndLowerCaseVariableNaming]</ref> Of these, ''kebab-case'', dating at least to 2012,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://stackoverflow.com/posts/12273101/revisions |title=Revisions to jwfearn's answer to What's the name for dash-separated case? |date=5 September 2012 |author=jwfearn}}</ref> has achieved some currency since.<ref>''Living Clojure'' (2015), by Carin Meier, [https://books.google.com/books?id=b4odCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA91 p. 91]</ref><ref>[https://lodash.com/docs#kebabCase lodash: kebabCase]</ref>

One approach is to [[delimiter|delimit]] separate words with a [[alphanumeric|nonalphanumeric]] character. The two characters commonly used for this purpose are the [[hyphen]] ("-") and the [[underscore]] ("_"); e.g., the two-word name "<code>two words</code>" would be represented as "<code>two-words</code>" or "<code>two_words</code>". The hyphen is used by nearly all programmers writing [[COBOL]] (1959), [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]] (1970), and [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] (1958); it is also common in [[Unix]] for commands and packages, and is used in [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS]].<ref>{{cite web |title = CSS reference |website = [[Mozilla Developer Network]] |url = https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference |access-date=2016-06-18}}</ref> This convention has no standard name, though it may be referred to as ''lisp-case'' or ''COBOL-CASE'' (compare ''Pascal case''), ''kebab-case'', ''brochette-case'', or other variants.<ref>{{Cite web | title = StackOverflow – What's the name for snake_case with dashes? | url = https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11273282/whats-the-name-for-snake-case-with-dashes }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | title = Programmers – If this is camelCase what-is-this? | url = http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104468/if-this-is-camelcase-what-is-this }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | title = Camel_SNAKE-kebab | website = [[GitHub]] | url = https://github.com/qerub/camel-snake-kebab | date = September 2019 }}</ref><ref>[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnderscoreVersusCapitalAndLowerCaseVariableNaming UnderscoreVersusCapitalAndLowerCaseVariableNaming]</ref> Of these, ''kebab-case'', dating at least to 2012,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://stackoverflow.com/posts/12273101/revisions |title=Revisions to jwfearn's answer to What's the name for dash-separated case? |date=5 September 2012 |author=jwfearn}}</ref> has achieved some currency since.<ref>''Living Clojure'' (2015), by Carin Meier, [https://books.google.com/books?id=b4odCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA91 p. 91]</ref><ref>[https://lodash.com/docs#kebabCase lodash: kebabCase]</ref>

By contrast, languages in the FORTRAN/ALGOL tradition, notably languages in the [[C (programming language)|C]] and [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] families, used the hyphen for the [[subtraction]] [[infix notation|infix]] operator, and did not wish to require spaces around it (as [[free-form language]]s), preventing its use in identifiers. An alternative is to use underscores; this is common in the C family (including Python), with lowercase words, being found for example in ''[[The C Programming Language]]'' (1978), and has come to be known as [[snake case]]. Underscores with uppercase, as in UPPER_CASE, are commonly used for [[C preprocessor]] macros, hence known as MACRO_CASE, and for [[environment variable]]s in Unix, such as BASH_VERSION in [[bash (Unix shell)|bash]]. Sometimes this is humorously referred to as SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE.

By contrast, languages in the FORTRAN/ALGOL tradition, notably languages in the [[C (programming language)|C]] and [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] families, used the hyphen for the [[subtraction]] [[infix notation|infix]] operator, and did not wish to require spaces around it (as [[free-form language]]s), preventing its use in identifiers.

By contrast, languages in the FORTRAN/ALGOL tradition, notably languages in the [[C (programming language)|C]] and [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] families, used the hyphen for the [[subtraction]] [[infix notation|infix]] operator, and did not wish to require spaces around it (as [[free-form language]]s), preventing its use in identifiers. An alternative is to use underscores; this is common in the C family (including Python), with lowercase words, being found for example in ''[[The C Programming Language]]'' (1978), and has come to be known as [[snake case]] or ''snail case''. Underscores with uppercase, as in UPPER_CASE, are commonly used for [[C preprocessor]] macros, hence known as MACRO_CASE, and for [[environment variable]]s in Unix, such as BASH_VERSION in [[bash (Unix shell)|bash]]. Sometimes this is humorously referred to as SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE (alternatively SCREAMING_SNAIL_CASE).

====Letter case-separated words====