Naming Conventions: What to name a boolean variable? [closed]

Answer 1

A simple semantic name would be last. This would allow code always positive code like:

if (item.last)
    ...

do {
   ...
} until (item.last);

Answer 2

Personally more than anything I would change the logic, or look at the business rules to see if they dictate any potential naming.

Since, the actual condition that toggles the boolean is actually the act of being "last". I would say that switching the logic, and naming it "IsLastItem" or similar would be a more preferred method.

Answer 3

Two issues to think about

1. What is the scope of the variable (in other words: are you speaking about a local variable or a field?) ? A local variable has a narrower scope compared to a field. In particular, if the variable is used inside a relatively short method I would not care so much about its name. When the scope is large naming is more important.

2. I think there's an inherent conflict in the way you treat this variable. On the one hand you say "false when an object is the last in a list", where on the other hand you also want to call it "inFront". An object that is (not) last in the list does not strike me as (not) inFront. This I would go with isLast.