Gareth wrote the following in reply to a post about good programming practices.

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I have recently got into the habit of using prefixes to my variables. Such as:

a mysql query = $qQueryName
a result = $rQueryName
a message = $mMessageName
a variable = $vVariableName

They really do help me, at least, structure my code and makes them easy to see what they are.
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It is interesting. Does anyone else use prefixes like this? If so, what are they? I'm asking because I'm a new learner and I was doing the same thing, except I was making up my own system, sort of like:

a numeric variable = $nNumber
a char variable = $cName
an array = $aMyarray

Thanks!

Karl, Will and I all use them throughout our projects. Will posted a thread on the actual prefixes over in this thread many months ago, which you may find interesting. Our prefixes are not strictly correct because we use sz for strings. In our opinion, $szString looks prettier than $sString, and so we're victims of aesthetics in that instance. Naughty us!

However, considering I use them, I may be somewhat biased, so please excuse me. Nonetheless, the reason I use variable prefixes is so I can immediately identify what a variable should contain. It doesn't just have its readability advantages, but rather you can automatically filter data based on the prefixes. So if I have a variable called $iNumber then I could enforce that data type to be an integer. It often works well in passing the items from POST and GET.

The variable prefixes are actually nothing new. They're officially called Hungarian notation, and Wikipedia has an impartial page all about them. At the end of the day, it all comes down to personal preference. We can argue for and against for years to come.

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well actually it depends on what your convenience really was...for me...i also use prefixes in variables..:D

so this means that this is my table variable name for my news..:D

Wildhoney --

Thanks for pointing out the previous discussion. It was very good, just the points I was looking for!!

Cheers!

I also read the Wikipedia article you cited. Very interesting! It shows that some very big names in recent comp. sci. history have very different opinions about using this type of notation.

David

Also, I heard that this notation is not anymore recommended because of the problems that appear if you cast varialbes.
But I agree that using some of the prefixes is really helpful

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Hey, that Gareth is a genius!

I have found that a prefix system helps. What doesn't matter is what the prefixes are: you could use anything, just as long you can read them quickly and be able to tell what they are.

Gareth.

Yep, that seems to be the case.

Thanks.