Re: Objective-C Instance Variable Names
Re: Objective-C Instance Variable Names
- Subject: Re: Objective-C Instance Variable Names
- From: "Dennis C. De Mars" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:44:15 -0700
I didn't notice the Xcode syntax-coloring of the instance variables --
I'll have to try using that.
There's another solution besides naming conventions. I've been through
most of them -- underscore prefix or postfix, prefix with "m" etc. I
generally don't find naming conventions very satisfactory. It seems
like I'm trying to encode something into the name that should be
evident from the syntax of the language or the context the variable is
used in.
So the solution I am toying with, which I think most people won't like
because it is quite verbose, harkens back to the old days of
programming on the Mac. If you ever used the MacApp application
framework (in its original incarnation) you used Object Pascal, and in
Object Pascal all instance variables had to be referenced as members
of "SELF", so for instance you'd have to write something like
"SELF.myVariable := 2;"
When the framework was converted to C++, one of the complaints that
some MacApp programmers had was that the C++ syntax would be less
clear in particular regarding instance variables, where you could
write "myVariable = 2;" and it wasn't clear whether "myVariable" was
an instance variable or not. The Object Pascal syntax always made it
clear whether the variable was an instance variable without having to
refer back to the object declaration.
It was pointed out to these people that you could just as easily use
the equivalent "this->myVariable = 2;" I believe the MacApp code
itself made heavy use of this convention. This mollified some Object
Pascal fans.
I'm toying with doing this in my new project, just because I dislike
coding properties like this into the name. I'm naming my instance
variables anything I want to and then consistently referring to them
with self->myVariable (to access the raw ivar) or self.myVariable if I
want to use the accessor.
So far it seems to be OK, except that I don't particularly like the
looks of it when used as the target of a message (as in "[self->target
method];") although I don't have a rational reason for that opinion.
- Dennis D.
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