Hungarian notation

Hungarian notation is a naming convention in computer programming, in which the name of an object indicates its type and intended use. There are two types of Hungarian notation: Systems Hungarian notation and Apps Hungarian notation. This document refers to Systems Hungarian notation. See external links for Apps Hungarian notation.

Related Topics:
Naming convention - Computer programming - Object - Type

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It was designed to be language-independent, and found its first major use with the BCPL programming language. Because BCPL has no data types other than the machine word, nothing in the language itself helps a programmer remember variables' types. Hungarian notation aims to remedy this by providing the programmer with explicit knowledge of each variable's data type.

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In Hungarian notation, a variable name starts with one or more lower-case letters which are mnemonics for the type or purpose of that variable, followed by whatever the name the programmer has chosen; this last part is sometimes distinguished as the given name. The first character of the given name is capitalized to separate it from the type indicators (see also CamelCase).

Related Topics:
Mnemonic - CamelCase

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While the notation always uses initial lower-case letters as mnemonics, it does not prescribe the mnemonics themselves. There are several widely used conventions (see examples below), but any set of letters can be used, as long as they are consistent within a given body of code.

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