Concise and consistent naming

Concise and consistent naming (2005)

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by Florian Deißenböck , Markus Pizka

Venue:	In IWPC 2005
Citations:	75 - 9 self

BibTeX

@INPROCEEDINGS{Deißenböck05conciseand,
    author = {Florian Deißenböck and Markus Pizka},
    title = {Concise and consistent naming},
    booktitle = {In IWPC 2005},
    year = {2005},
    pages = {97--106},
    publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}
}

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Abstract

Approximately 70 % of the source code of a software system consists of identifiers. Hence, the names chosen as identifiers are of paramount importance for the readability of computer programs and therewith their comprehensibility. However, virtually every programming language allows programmers to use almost arbitrary sequences of characters as identifiers which far too often results in more or less meaningless or even misleading naming. Coding style guides address this problem but are usually limited to general and hard to enforce rules like “identifiers should be self-describing”. This paper renders adequate identifier naming far more precisely. A formal model, based on bijective mappings between concepts and names, provides a solid foundation for the definition of precise rules for concise and consistent naming. The enforcement of these rules is supported by a tool that incrementally builds and maintains a complete identifier dictionary while the system is being developed. The identifier dictionary explains the language used in the software system, aids in consistent naming, and improves productivity of programmers by proposing suitable names depending on the current context.

Keyphrases

consistent naming software system source code bijective mapping complete identifier dictionary precise rule arbitrary sequence current context formal model paramount importance computer program adequate identifier coding style solid foundation suitable name misleading naming programming language