Naming Guidelines

Table of Contents

• Generalities
• Naming guidelines
  • Functions and Methods
  • Macros and defines
  • Classes and Structures
  • Variables
  • Files

Generalities

Some common rules of thumb :

• Every name exposed to Smil users shall be meaninfull.
• Avoid acronyms or shortcuts, unless they are fully known by users out of Smil development group.
• Every name exposed to users shall be directly related to some concept usually found in textbooks and vice-versa. If this isn't the case, it shall be fully explained in the function/class/.../whatever prototype.
  • Avoid meaningless names. Exceptions may be for some usual loop control variables : x, y, z, i, j, k;

Naming guidelines

Functions and Methods

• function names are a sequence of words without spaces, with the first character of each word in uppercase, except the first one. E.g. : lambdaLabel, imageResize, distanceEuclidean, ...
• function name length shall be limited to something like 15-20 characters.
• The full description of what that function does shall be done in the documentation, not in the name of the function.
• If the function name is too long it can, usually, be shortened.

Macros and defines

• every character in uppercase.
  
• Although using macros are discouraged you should always put all caracteres in macros and defines in uppercase

Classes and Structures

To be done

Variables

To be done

Files

• C++ source filenames begin always with D;
• File extensions per directory :
  • src : .cpp - C++ source files
  • include : .h - C++ headers
  • include/private : .hpp - C++ headers