Class names that start with C

Question

The MFC has all class names that start with C. For example, CFile and CGdiObject. Has anyone seen it used elsewhere? Is there an official naming convention guide from Mic

Answer 1

See here : http://www.jelovic.com/articles/stupid_naming.htm for a long article on this issue.

Answer 2

personally I find that hungarian notation helps me, in that I can look at a screen full of variables and instantly know what they are as I try and absorb the logic. Your only argument against it I see is "extra typing"

Answer 3

I remember Borland compilers were comming with libraries where class names started with 'T'. Probably for "type" :)

Answer 4

we use it at work, like many other naming conventions

by many I meant C for classes, p for pointer, m_ for members, s_ for static members, n for integer ... not many documents

Answer 5

That was a old C++ coding style, and MFC was probably one of the last things to use it.

It was usually just a convention of C++ (and maybe a few other languages), and hence it started falling out of favor as the languages became more interoperable, through COM and then .NET.

You still see it's cousin, the "I" prefix for interfaces, pretty often. I've always found it interesting that "I" survived when "C" died, but that was probably because interfaces were used so heavily in COM interoperability.

Answer 6

Such conventions for variables are useful for languages like Fortran where you don't need to declare the types of your variables before using them. I seem to recall that variables who's names started with "i" or "j" defaulted to integers, and variables who's names started with "r" and other letters defaulted to real (float) values.

That people use similar for languages where you do need to declare variables - or for class definitions - is probably just a relic of someone misunderstanding the old code conventions from languages like Fortran where it actually mattered.