C# naming convention for constants?

Question

private const int THE_ANSWER = 42; 

or

private const int theAnswer = 42; 

Personally I think with modern IDEs we should go with camelCase as ALL_CAPS looks strange. What do you think?

Answer 1

The recommended naming and capitalization convention is to use PascalCasing for constants (Microsoft has a tool named StyleCop that documents all the preferred conventions and can check your source for compliance - though it is a little bit too anally retentive for many people's tastes). e.g.

private const int TheAnswer = 42; 

The Pascal capitalization convention is also documented in Microsoft's Framework Design Guidelines.