Trouble coming up with good names for functions

Question

So, I often have trouble describing a function in a succinct name. It's usually not a problem in functions that are made for reuse, but often a large process needs to be broken into sub-functions. Often these get strange names, such as connectionsToAccessLines or handleWallVisionSplit or something like that. And while these functions only do one thing, it's very tough to come up with a good name for them because they really are just one part of a larger algorithm.

What do you do in this situation? It's very frustrating.

Answer 1

Sometimes if you can't come up with a good function name it's an indication that the function doesn't have a nice, crisp focus and needs to be refactored. If it's a class method, perhaps the class needs refactoring too.

But it's well worth the trouble finding the best possible names, since it makes your code so much more understandable and usable.

Update: Many software engineering authors have talked about the importance of naming. Henry F. Ledgard's Programming Proverbs (1975) and Brian Kernighan and P.J. Plaugher's Elements of Programming Style (1978) were early ones and are still worth reading. Steve McConnell's wonderful Code Complete (2nd Edition, 2005) is a more recent example, devoting an entire chapter to the topic.

Elements of Programming Style was in part patterned on Strunk and White's Elements of Style, which actually has a surprising relevance. Their stress on making prose clear and extremely concise applies to our technical writing and comments (and naming), but I've always seen it as analogous to what we do when we refactor and improve our code.