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From: willer@carolian.com (Steve Willer)
Subject: Re: Hungarian notation
Date: 1996/05/23
Message-ID: <31a3b322.442404233@sqarc>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 156228535
sender: news@sq.com (News Administrator)
references: <4adem2$b5s@mercury.IntNet.net> <4n6off$6e2@mikasa.iol.it>
 <3198F30F.2A2@zurich.ibm.com> <DrqsDo.Eu5@eskimo.com>
 <4nsg3f$liu@solutions.solon.com>
organization: Carolian Systems, Toronto ON
newsgroups: 
 comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2,comp.edu,comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 1996-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


seebs@solutions.solon.com (Peter Seebach) wrote:

>The problem is that now, you'll see code like
>	pZz->iSomething = 3;

>Consider:  Years later, you need to change this... You need to use
>a function... So ZZ has a member
>	int (*pifFoov)(void);
>which is always set roughly correctly, and we go to
>	#define iSomething (*(pifFoov)())
>or something similar.  (I know, this isn't precisely right.)
>Suddenly, the name is a blatant lie.

Of course it is. So don't do that. If you really need to change the
variable type, you can always do a search-and-replace. With my code, my
HN prefixes are of fairly low detail and the names are usually
descriptive (and unique), so on the rare times when I might change the
type of a member, I just do a search and replace with no problems.

Besides, let's say for the sake of argument that you're not using HN:

  myZ->Something = 3;

First of all, I'll never remember that myZ is a pointer and Something is
an int. I can't rely on my memory and I certainly can't rely on some
other maintainer's ability to memorize my code.

But that aside, what if you do need to change it to a function? How can
you possibly avoid editing the calling code (unless you used that
#define hack, which isn't even an option)? At the very minimum, you'd
have to change it to

  myZ->Something() = 3;

or

  myZ->Something(3);

Either way, you have to change existing code, so I don't see the
disadvantages of having HN in it already.

The reason this doesn't bother me at all is that I don't use data
members very often. At least with C++, my language, you're much better
off to design your classes based on actions and queries, rather than
direct data-exchange. The consequence of this is that member-variables
aren't generally public.

>How about this:  Notate the following declaration correctly:
>	FILE *Foo;
>
>... Hmm.  Maybe it's "pst".  Nope, FILE may not be a struct.  Maybe it's
>"pch".  Nope, file may not be a char, even though FILE * is often really
>a pointer to char.  

???? You're kidding, right? "FILE" is the struct used by the stdio
functions. How can any function get a descriptor number from an array of
chars?

That issue aside...I would use the prefix "pf", as in "pointer to file".
So my declaration would perhaps be:

    FILE *pfFoo;

Seems pretty clear to me.