Is using underscore suffix for members beneficial?

Question

class C {
 private:
  int member_; // here is the underscore I refer to.
}

This underscore is recommended by Google Style Guide and Geosoft\'s C++

Answer 1

I came up with this style independently early in my C++ coding days (late 80s, early 90s) because I encountered several confusing situations in which I had to keep going back to the class header to figure out which variable was really a member variable.

Once I started seeing other people's C++ code that did the same thing I was rather gratified that I had noticed a problem that other people had and that the solution I adopted for myself was something other people also thought of.

It's not frequently useful, but it's fairly innocuous and when it is useful, it's very useful.

This is also why I really hate the m_ style. It's not innocuous, and I think the added ugliness is not worth the benefit.

I do use an S_ prefix for file scope static variables and class static variables that aren't constants. They are sort of like global variables, and I think their use should be signaled loudly.