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by thinkingeric 5622 days ago
Here is a quote from that essay that says it much clearer than my pithy 'guideline':

"I prefer minimum-length but maximum-information names, and then let the context fill in the rest. Globals, for instance, typically have little context when they are used, so their names need to be relatively evocative. Thus I say maxphysaddr (not MaximumPhysicalAddress) for a global variable, but np not NodePointer for a pointer locally defined and used. This is largely a matter of taste, but taste is relevant to clarity."

1 comments

Huh, why not MaxPhysicalAddress[1]? "maxphysaddr" looks like my cat walked across the keyboard.

[1] or seperated by underscores or dashes in up- or lowercase wearing earmuffs

for what concerns capital letters, from the essay I cited before [http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/pikestyle]: "I eschew embedded capital letters in names; to my prose-oriented eyes, they are too awkward to read comfortably. They jangle like bad typography". As Pike acknowledges this is just a matter of taste.