Naming Conventions

[Kay]

I have noticed that some of you name global fields gfieldname. I was wondering if there is an entire naming convention standard usually or often used by FM developers. I am just getting back into development after years and would find this very useful. Whatever we used in the olden days for COBOL etc. wouldn't quite cut it.

Thanks, regards, and yes I'm old, Kay ;-)

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

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Originally posted by kattatonic:

I have noticed that some of you name global fields gfieldname. I was wondering if there is an entire naming convention standard usually or often used by FM developers. I am just getting back into development after years and would find this very useful. Whatever we used in the olden days for COBOL etc. wouldn't quite cut it.

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Theories abound, but no standard has been set forth by anyone in the industry.

I originally started with the standard Hungarian notation, but found its short, more cryptic names did not suit FMP that well.

The "g" notation for global fields is fine, but they end up getting stuck amongst normal fields.

I use the following:

User input fields are named normally

Global fields are named _GlobalField

Calculations are named [calc] CalcField

Summary fields are named [sum] SummaryField

Display calcs are named [disp] DisplayCalculation

And so on...

This is nice becuase it not only allows sorting by name, but also by a category.

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Kurt Knippel

Senior Filemaker Developer

http://www.database-resources.com

mailto:[email protected]

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[WBlanchard]

The other thing that I do in my development is to start field name with a 3 to 4 character initial file designator. This can be particularly helpful identifying the originating file of a field in a multi-file solution.