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The Standard C++ Naming Convention

The Standard C++ Naming Convention

If you’re looking for a “house style” of naming convention, you can adopt the one used in Standard C++. It uses all lowercase letters for identifiers, and underscores as word separators. According to this naming convention, a function that cleans a stack, for example, would be named:

   void clean_stack(); // ANSI/ISO C++ naming style

Rather than:

   void CleanStack(); // MFC style

Class names in the Standard Library follow this convention too:

   class std::type_info {/*..*/}; // class name  class std::bad_cast {/*..*/};    class std::vector*..*/> {/*..*/}; // class template

Even constants have all lowercase names:

   ios::binary

Remember that the actual naming convention you pick isn’t crucial; what’s important is that you use it consistently.

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