C# Fields Capitalization Convention [closed]

Question

My textbook (Visual C# How to Program, 6/e) states that fields in C# should use camelCase. This corresponds with examples given in Microsoft C# Guide: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/classes-and-structs/fields

public class CalendarEntry
{
    // private field
    private DateTime date;
    // ...
}

However the official Microsoft naming convention clearly states that fields should use PascalCase (although they didn't provide an example of private fields as they normaly should be): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/design-guidelines/capitalization-conventions

Identifier: Field, Casing: Pascal, Example:

class MessageQueue
{
    public static readonly TimeSpan InfiniteTimeout;
}

public struct UInt32
{
    public const Min = 0;
}

Sooo, how do I know what case to use to keep my coding style right according to MS coding conventions?

Answer 1

AFAIK there is no set in stone convention for c#... Yes, there is technically an "official" convention, but it's not followed 100% of the time, even in MS's own source code, and it's certainly not religiously followed by many programmers and/or companies.

With that in mind, my preferred convention, and the best I've seen so far, is the one set by default in ReSharper. I strongly suggest following this convention:

• PascalCase for: Classes, Structs, Methods, Properties, public | internal | protected Fields (regardless of static | readonly | const) and private const Fields.
• _underscorePrefixCamelCase for: private _fields (except when const).
• camelCase for: local variables.