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I am generally not one to engage in subjective arguments over matters like variable naming, code formatting, etc. So I have no intention of starting an argument here.
I just came across this (old) blog post which recommends not prefixing member variable names:
Do not use a prefix for member variables (_, m_, s_, etc.). If you want to distinguish between local and member variables you should use "this." in C# and "Me." in VB.NET.
For C#, yeah, I get it: member variables can be lower camelCase, and public properties/methods can be PascalCase. But VB.NET is case-insensitive, so you can't really give a private member the same name as a public property except with a lower case first letter.
I've generally prefixed member variables with an underscore, but I've been told that's not idiomatic.
So really I'm just curious: how do you name your member variables in VB.NET? And is there a "standard" way?
I'm not asking because I believe there's a "right" way or because I particularly want to change my style, and certainly not because I have any desire to tell others they're "wrong." Like I said, I'm just curious.
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Naming VariablesEdit Variable names in Visual Basic are made up of letters (upper and lower case) and digits. The underscore character, "_", is also permitted. Names must not begin with a digit. Names can be as long as you like.
Use the following rules when you name procedures, constants, variables, and arguments in a Visual Basic module: You must use a letter as the first character. You can't use a space, period (.), exclamation mark (!), or the characters @, &, $, # in the name. Name can't exceed 255 characters in length.
It's personal preference, although there's widespread support for having some distinction. Even in C# I don't think there's one widely used convention.
Jeff Prosise says
As a matter of personal preference I typically prefix private fields with an underscore [in C#] ... This convention is used quite a lot in the .NET framework but it is not used throughout.
From the .NET Framework Design Guidelines 2nd Edition page 73.
Jeffrey Richter says
I make all my fields private and I prefix my instance fields with "m_" and my static fields with "s_" [in C#]
From the .NET Framework Design Guidelines 2nd Edition page 47. Anthony Moore (BCL team) also thinks using "m_" and "s_" is worth consideration, page 48.
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I personally use m_ for member variables.
Although with automatic properties in VS 2010 I haven't needed to for any new code I've written recently.
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