| Hungarian Notation | Computing | Hungarian Notation A linguistic convention requiring one or more letters to be added to the front of variable names to denote scope and/or type. Hungarian Notation is mainly confined to Microsoft Windows programming environments, such as Microsoft C, C++ and Visual Basic. It was originally devised by Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian, who was a senior programmer at Microsoft for many years. He disliked the way that names in C programs could stand for any kind of variable. This was for ever leading to mistakes, as programmers tried to manipulate variables in ways that their type prohibited, which they would never had done if they remembered what sort they were. According to legend, fellow programmers at Microsoft looked at the convoluted, vowel-less variable names produced by his scheme and, like everyone else who has come into contact with them since, said something like "This might as well be in Greek - or even Hungarian!". They almost certainly had in mind as well another kind of mathematical system called "Polish notation" (a variant form called reverse Polish notation is commonly used in calculators, which leads to expressions without brackets or punctuation which are easier to enter). They put the two together and made up the name "Hungarian notation". Hungarian Notation is not really necessary when using a modern strongly-typed language as the compiler warns the programmer if a variable of one type is used as if it were another type. It is less useful in object-oriented programming languages such as C++, where many variables are going to be instances of classes [Why?]. In addition, variable names are essentially only comments, and thus are just as susceptible to becoming out of date and incorrect as any other comment. For example, if a signed short int becomes an unsigned long int, the variable name, and every use of it throughout the program, should be changed to reflect its new type. If used appropriately however, it does enforce a certain consistency, especially when scoping is taken into account as well as type (for example g_ for global variables, m_ for members, c_ for static members, l_ for local, etc.). Simonyi's original monograph (http://www.strangecreations.com/library/c/naming.txt). Microsoft VB Naming Conventions (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q110/2/64.asp). (1999-06-03). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.. |
