As a convention, my team adheres to scoping prefixes. ivVariableName is an instance variable. svVariableName is a private class variable for use by class methods. VARIABLENAME is a public class variable depending. pVariableName are parameter variables. Everything else (no prefix) is a "working variable".
Jesse -----Original Message----- From: Stephane Bailliez [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 5:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Ant q? about core Java task: why are members private? > -----Original Message----- > From: Conor MacNeill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [...] > A couple of points. > > I am generally against having data members as protected. It > means weaker > encapsulation, which allows subclasses to violate the super > class' call > invariant. It also increases the size of the contract between > the class and > any subclasses. That contract should be restricted to methods, IMHO. I agree. protected members are ok if the inheritance hierarchy does not exceed two levels and that subclasses are not too numerous. Otherwise we put ourselves in trouble for maintenance/evolution. As a note I'm also against the coding style which does not clearly identify the data members from the local variables. Having just possibly an uppercase letter between 2 words is not enough, most of the time variables are one word. This is maintenance nightmare: 'where is this variable coming from ?...mm not its not local, not it's not method variable, not it's not an instance variable...mmm..parent class maybe ?'. Whatever the coding style is: _something, m_something, ... is much better than nothing. Apache projects are supposed to adhere to the Sun coding conventions, but I feel these conventions are OK for small projects in homegeneous environment, not for moderate one in heterogeneous environment. Any opinion on this touchy subject ? :) -- St�phane Bailliez Software Engineer, Paris - France iMediation - http://www.imediation.com Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed above are mine and not those from my company.
