Why use prefixes on member variables in C++ classes

Question

A lot of C++ code uses syntactical conventions for marking up member variables. Common examples include

• m_memberName for public members (where public

Answer 1

I like variable names to give only a meaning to the values they contain, and leave how they are declared/implemented out of the name. I want to know what the value means, period. Maybe I've done more than an average amount of refactoring, but I find that embedding how something is implemented in the name makes refactoring more tedious than it needs to be. Prefixes indicating where or how object members are declared are implementation specific.

color = Red;

Most of the time, I don't care if Red is an enum, a struct, or whatever, and if the function is so large that I can't remember if color was declared locally or is a member, it's probably time to break the function into smaller logical units.

If your cyclomatic complexity is so great that you can't keep track of what is going on in the code without implementation-specific clues embedded in the names of things, most likely you need to reduce the complexity of your function/method.

Mostly, I only use 'this' in constructors and initializers.