Naming convention for objects?

I keep looking for this but can't find it. What naming convention is standard for objects that are instantiated?

See Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries.

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Originally Posted by Kevin McFarlane

See Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries.

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Maybe I'm missing it, but it looks like they don't mention a naming convention for objects created from a class. I've been using camel casing, but I've also seen an "o" prefix used. For example:


XmlDocument() xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();

XmlDocument oXmlDoc = new XmlDocument();

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Originally Posted by User376

Maybe I'm missing it, but it looks like they don't mention a naming convention for objects created from a class. I've been using camel casing, but I've also seen an "o" prefix used. For example:


XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();

XmlDocument oXmlDoc = new XmlDocument();

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Typo in first example fixed. No editing posts here? Strange.

The convention is to use Camel Case for all local variables and method parameters, so your first example would be OK.

The second example is Hungarian notation and is specifically not recommended in .NET (it says this in the guidelines). See here.

For member variables the conventions may be more relaxed so it is quite common to use a leading _.

You'll find that there are various naming conventions elsewhere on the web but the basics tend to be similar to Microsoft's recommendations.

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Originally Posted by Kevin McFarlane

For member variables the conventions may be more relaxed so it is quite common to use a leading _.

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I've seen people do this all over the place, but I've never quite understood why. What's the rationale for using the leading underscore? Is it a historical convention or something...?

It's probably due to the fact that a lot of C# devs were previously Visual C++ devs and MFC apps. had an m_ naming convention for member variables.

We don't really need it but some sort of convention is just a convenience for distinguishing between the use of a local variable and a member variable (or in .NET's terminology a field).

In Java it's more common to write this.x = x for example if you're assigning to a field within a method. Strictly-speaking this is preferred but not often favoured in .NET circles. Personally it's not something I'm hung up on. Adherence to the general Camel and Pascal naming conventions are more important.