Is naming variables after their type a bad practice?

Question

I\'m programming C++ using the underscore naming style (as opposed to camel case) which is also used by the STL and boost. However, since both types and variables/functions are

Answer 1

Naming variables after their type specifically is indeed a bad practice. The code is supposed to be as type-independent as possible. That implies that any references to actual types should be restricted to declarations (again, as much as possible). Trying to embed type information into variable name would violate that principle. Don't do it.

What one might want to embed into variable name is the variable's semantical meaning. Like "width", "length", "index", "coordinate", "rectangle", "color", "string", "converter" and so on. Unfortunately, many people, when they see it, incorrectly assume that these portions of the names are intended to describe the type of the variable. This misunderstanding often makes them to engage into that bad practice (of naming variables after their types) later in their code.

A classic well-known example of such misunderstanding is so called Hungarian notation. Hungarian notation implies prefixing variable names with special unified prefixes that describe the semantic of the variable. In this original form Hungarian notation is an extremely useful good naming convention. However, in many practical cases it gets distorted into something completely different: prefixing the variable names with something that describes their type. The latter is certainly not a good idea.