Naming Standards

Alsuhaibani, R., Newman, C., Decker, M., Collard, M.L., Maletic, J.I., On the Naming of Methods: A Survey of Professional Developers, in the Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Madrid Spain, May 25 - 28, 2021, 13 pages.

Alsuhaibani, R., Newman, C., Decker, M., Collard, M.L., Maletic, J.I., A Survey on Method Naming Standards: Questions and Responses Artifact, in the Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion (ICSE-Companion) Artifact Tack, Madrid Spain, May 25 - 28, 2021, 2 pages.

Alsuhaibani, R., Newman, C., Decker, M., Collard, M.L., Maletic, J.I., An Approach to Automatically Assess Method Names, in the Proceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), Pittsburgh, PA, USA , May 16-17, 2022, 12 pages.

• Survey of 1100+ developers
• Result: Wide support for these standards
• Result: Similar across multiple programming languages
• Result: Very slight differences based on experience
• Paper refers to methods, but results also apply to free functions

List of Naming Standards

• Naming Style
• Grammatical Structure
• Verb Phrase
• Dictionary Terms
• Full Words
• Idioms and Slang
• Abbreviations & Acronyms
• Prefix/Suffix
• Length

Naming Style

getFullName

getScriptState

call_with_default

garbage_collection

check_static_allocation_size

getfullName

getscriptstate

• Popular styles: camelCase and under_score
• Little difference in cognitive load during comprehension
• Pretty equivalent, except that camelCase appears to have a slight advantage

Grammatical Structure

registerManagedResource

managedResourceRegister

// verb phrase
drawContentBorder

// verb phrase with a prepositional phrase
performTestsFromZipFile

// noun phrase
nextArea

• Function names with multiple words need to have a grammatically correct sentence structure
• verb phrase
• verb phrase with a prepositional phrase
• noun phrase

Verb Phrase

manage_caching_sizes

computeProductBlockingSizes

get_cached_node

x_cached_node

• Not only grammatically correct but contain a verb or a verb phrase
• Functions are actions

Dictionary Terms

findLength

abcdefg

cccc

aa2020

• Words used in the function name are actual dictionary terms
• Meaningful natural-language terms
• Not a non-dictionary word, e.g., "2" instead of "to"
• Use of non-dictionary words makes an otherwise high-quality identifier hard to understand

Full Words

startConnection

/* for the same function as above */
c

• Use full words as opposed to single-letter identifier names
• Research clearly shows improved comprehension with full-word identifiers instead of single-letter names

Idioms and Slang

// personal name
fido

// idiom
cutting_corners

// slang
CurveBall

• The name should not contain personal expressions, idioms, or slang
• Special case of Dictionary Terms and Full Word standards
• Using slang and idioms referred to as a cute practice
• Choose clarity over entertainment value

Abbreviations & Acronyms

getStr pyConnection

get_algo close_db_connection

open_GUI_interface get_URL get_FIFO traverse_DOM_tree

repr getProtoNameNode

get_QWE sendAAAA

• If a name contains words that are abbreviations or acronyms, they should be well-known or standard
• Standard ones used by the organization or domain
• evil abbreviations - unfamiliar abbreviations that are very hard for programmers to understand

Prefix/Suffix

gimpItemGetPath

swift_stdlib_u_char

m_count

• Method names should not contain a prefix or suffix that is a term from the system
• Does not apply to the C language or groups of related free functions
• Developers quickly learn to ignore the prefix/suffix, and their existence becomes a marker of older code. Names should not contain scope or type information. Martin

Length

returnfalseifnosetterwasfoundandifreportnosetterfoundisfalse

Length

• Long debate in the research literature and developer discussion Cunningham
• Longer, more descriptive names have a positive impact on code comprehension Knuth
• Fixed maximum number of words in the name from 1 to 5.
• There is some disagreement in the results, as some developers stated that there should be no maximum length in all cases. However, almost all agreed to around 5 in nearly all cases.
• One exception: Names of unit-test (test-case) methods

Summary

• Presented standards are widely accepted in the developer community
• Quality of identifiers has a substantial impact on code comprehension
• Although the survey was for methods, almost all the standards apply to free functions