Identifier Naming Conventions and Software Coding
Standards: A Case Study in One School of Software
Yanqing Wang, Shengbin Wang, Xiaojie Li, Hang Li, Jin Du
School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology
Harbin, China
e-mail: yanqing@hit.edu.cn
Abstract - Within software coding standards, identifier naming
plays an important role. Identifier naming conventions were
divided into four categories in our research - Hungarian, Pascal,
Camel and Underscore. Such techniques in compiler theory as
regular expression and lexical analysis were used to extract
identifiers and to match them with the defined naming
conventions in our evaluation system. The consistency of
identifier naming was calculated with standard deviation. After
testing students’ projects in three years and three pedagogical
websites in which there were lots of Java files, the evaluating
system were proved applicable and some conclusions were made
based on the testing results as well.
Keywords - software quality assurance (SQA); coding standards;
identifier naming convention; regular expression; software metric
I. INTRODUCTION
It is a highly competitive era of globalization and
industrialization, in which the development of software
industry determines the competitiveness of science and
technology of a nation to some extent. The development of
software industry is based on software quality assurance
(SQA). Coding standards do not only help programmers
communicate and collaborate efficiently in big projects to
produce quality software products [1], also they are of great
significance when software enterprises undertake international
joint development [2]. Many internationally renowned software
companies have established strict criteria to improve the
standards of software codes [3][4]. The research and training of
coding standards is relevant to the competitiveness of software
industry. However, there is no efficient approach to evaluate
the coding standards of programs while manual evaluation is
expensive, much fallible and out of objectiveness.
In last decade, such software organizations as IBM,
Microsoft, Bell laboratory and some institutes began to explore
universal and applicable evaluation criteria of coding standards
rather than traditional testing techniques [5]. In 2nd
international conference of Asia-pacific Software Quality held
in Hong Kong in 2001, coding standards were discussed
formally and effective evaluation system to coding standards
was discussed to improve software quality. In 2006, an
evaluation approach based on code review process (CRP) was
proposed by Dr. Li in Unitec New Zealand University in which
coding specification was taken as a complement in manual
assessment to coding standards [6]. Fang proposed that using
coding standards to improve program quality [7]. Especially, in
the 8th IEEE International Working Conference on Source
Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM’08), source level
This research is a China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project
978-1-4244-5392-4/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
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software metrics, source level testing and verification were
main topics.
The research on coding standards has attracted our attention
since 2003. Many students and even professionals are not used
to complying with coding standards when they are writing
programs. While there are few approaches to be taken to
measure how much students or engineers comply with coding
standards in their programming practice. Along this topic, a
series of researches were undertaken by our team:
• Since hundreds of rules or guidelines in some software
companies are difficult to follow by students who are
studying their introductory programming languages, a
set of simplified coding standards were introduced into
our pedagogical process[8][9].
• Based on the simplified coding standards, the hierarchy
structure of evaluating index system was proposed in
which three layers (target layer, criterion layer and index
layer) and nineteen indices were defined. The weight
distributions of all indices were acquired by
questionnaire and Analytical Process Hierarchy (AHP)
[10].
• So as to facilitate students to evaluate their work online,
an evaluation platform was constructed, with which
students could upload their programs and got
benchmarking results and their detailed shortcomings on
coding standards [11].
• Through discriminating the relationship between
complying with coding standards and retaining
programming style, a quality outlook at source code
level was proposed [12].
Coding standards were divided into four categories: Layout,
Naming, Comment and Coding. Actually, naming conventions
play very important role since lots of programmers ignore
them. Such confusing variables as i, jj, kkk, or a1, a2, a3 can be
seen quite frequently not only in universities but in software
companies. The bad naming habits prevent programs from
being understood, maintained and reused. The naming of
identifiers such as variables, constants, functions, structure
tags, structure variables, classes and objects are all important.
So far, in global software industry, popular identifier naming
conventions include Hungarian, Camel, Pascal and so on.
Based on our previous researches on coding standards, the
recognition and statistics of identifier naming conventions are
our focus in this paper. First, input source files were scanned
and identifiers in them were extracted. Second, each identifier
was recognized and classified into corresponding category.
Third, the frequency and occurrences times of each category
 were summarized and analyzed so that some valuable results
were found. This paper was organized as follows: our related
researches were introduced in Section 2. The methodology was
described in section3. In Section 4, some cases were analyzed
and the corresponding results were introduced.
II. POPULAR IDENTIFIER NAMING CONVENTIONS
Although there is not a unified coding standard
internationally nowadays, more and more people admit the
affect of coding standard in the process of software developing
in practice. Almost every set of coding standard is made up of
four parts: layout, naming, comments and programming. That
is to say identifier naming is a quarter of coding standard.
When measuring the extent of specification of identifier
naming for source code internationally at present, four
common naming rules can be taken into consideration:
A. Hungarian naming convention
One or more lowercase letters are used as the prefix of an
identifier, so as to identify the scope and type of the identifier.
After the prefix is one or more words with first letter
uppercase, and the word should indicate the purpose of the
variable [13]. An example is: int iStudentNumber ; The partial
prefixes of Hungarian notion are listed in Table I.
TABLE I. PARTIAL PREFIXES IN HUNGARIAN NAMING CONVENTION
Prefix Type Prefix Type
a Array i integer
b Boolean l LongInt
by Byte lp LongPointer
… …
B. Camel naming convention
It is also spelled camel case. Uppercase letters are taken as
word separators, lowercase for the rest. In an identifier each
logical breakpoint uses an uppercase to mark. The initial letter
of the first word is in lower case as a camel is bowing its head.
An example is:
printEmployeePaychecks( ) ;
C. Pascal naming convention
It is similar to the Camel naming convention except that the
initial letter of the first word is uppercase. For example:
public void DisplayInfo( ) ;
String UserName( ) ;
D. Underscore naming convention
Underscore naming convention and Camel naming
convention are also very similar, only each logical breakpoint
in the identifier uses an underscore to mark. For example:
print_employee_paychecks( ) ;
III. METHODOLOGY
A. Regular expression
Regular expression derived from automatic control theory
and formal language theory in computer science. In 1950s,
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Kenneth introduced the mathematical sign of regular
expressions into grep. Since then, regular expressions have
been widely used in all kinds of UNIX operating systems and
similar tools. In computing, regular expressions provide a
concise and flexible means for identifying strings of text of
interest, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of
characters. A regular expression (often shortened to regex or
regexp) is written in a formal language that can be interpreted
by a regular expression processor, a program that either serves
as a parser generator or examines text and identifies parts that
match the provided specification [14].
In this paper, regular expression was used to extract
identifiers from source code programs and to match them with
the four accepted naming conventions. To extract identifiers
from a source program, it is not a good idea to scan it word by
word because the scanning process is often disturbed by non-
identifiers. Also, each variable has its definition. Therefore,
writing matched regular expressions can save more system
resources and time. The occurrence times and line numbers
cannot be obtained only by addressing definition sentences so
that two arrays are used. One array carries the identifiers
obtained from definition sentences, the other stores the
identifiers which are got when scanning the whole file and
ignoring punctuations, constants, reserved words, etc. The
latter array helps system get occurrence times and line numbers
of a certain identifier.
In java language, almost all the definition sentences are like
the following format:
(modifier+) type + variable (=new type ());
Therefore, when definition sentences are obtained, only
modifier or type is required. After extracting, every identifier
should be classified into a specific naming convention. As
mentioned above, four categories were defined and
miscellaneous identifiers are ignored when calculating. The
regular expressions of different naming conventions are listed
as follows (Table II).
TABLE II. REGULAR EXPRESSIONS OF DIFFERENT NAMING CONVENTIONS
Naming convention Regular expressions
[ab(by)(cb)(cr)(cx)(cy)(dw)(fn)hil(lp)(m_)
Hungary
n(np)ps(sz)w]+([A-Z][a-z]+)+
Camel [a-z]+([A-Z][a-z]+)+
Pascal ([A-Z][a-z]+)+
Underscore ([a-z]+_)+[a-z]+
B. Statistics approach
Generally, in a single program written by one programmer,
more than one identifier naming conventions may be applied.
Although it has not been proved which one is the best, it is no
doubt that the more consistent the identifier naming is, the
more the software complies with coding standards. However,
not every programmer has a sense to do so and there is no
effective statistics approach to measure identifier naming of
programmers. Therefore, a well-known statistics method,
standard deviation, became our solution.
In probability theory and statistics, standard deviation is a
measure of the variability or dispersion of a statistical
population, a data set, or a probability distribution. A low
standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be very
 close to the mean, whereas higher one indicates that the data above, the results of projects were calculated and listed in
are spread out over a large range of values. Table IV.
As the occurrence times of each identifier are different, the
standard deviation was calculated with two algorithms in our TABLE IV. PROJECTS BY THE YEAR 3 STUDENTS IN 2006 TO 2008
application system, one of which was depended on rough 2006 2007 2008
Naming
consistency index and the other was based on precise Rough Precise Rough Precise Rough Precise
consistency index. When calculating σ R , each identifier was Hungarian 64 526 66 275 115 488
Pascal 7 64 31 164 23 78
counted as one unit no matter how many times they appeared. Camel 1560 15312 1510 8980 2090 11475
While with σ P , the occurrence times of each identifier were Underscore 103 572 156 583 145 305
taken into account. For example, there are seven variables in Consistency 752.0 7465.9 714.8 4323.3 999.2 5594.9
one program: usloop, m_Name, StudentNumber, CallerId,
userName, moneyAmout, no_of_student. The occurrences and With the data in Table IV, it was found that: Camel
naming conventions of them are shown in Table III. naming convention was utilized the most frequently;
Underscore and Hungarian naming conventions took the
TABLE III. NAMING CONVENTIONS AND OCCURRENCES subsequent positions; rough consistency index and precise
Variable name Occurrences Naming conventions consistency index had similar performance.
usloop 15 Hungarian
B. Three pedagogical websites
m_Name 8 Hungarian
StudentNumber 2 Pascal So as to assure pedagogical quality and to enhance the
CallerId 1 Pascal learning outcome by students, three pedagogical websites were
userName 6 Camel developed and put into commission in SoS@HIT. These three
moneyAmout 7 Camel websites were all tested with our application to find some
no_of_student 15 Underscore meaningful results. These websites are running in intranet of
HIT and have not opened to internet users yet.
1) www.wondercall.cn:8080/codingstandards: This web
Let X be a random variable with mean value μ . In the case
site is working to test the coding standards of C/C++ files. It
where X takes random values from a finite data set X1, X2, X3, brought into service in 2007 and 73 Java files are running.
and X4 to present the times of using the four identifier naming 2) www.wondercall.cn:8080/coolpsp: This web site is used
conventions: Hungarian, Pascal, Camel and Underscore. as a computer aided construction (CAI) system for course
Since X1 = 2, X2 = 2, X3 = 2, X4 = 1 and the mean value Personal Software Process (PSP). It began its work in 2007 and
μ =1.73, the rough standard deviation is: 7 java files are running.
1 3) www.wondercall.cn:8080/peercodereview: It is used to
σR = [(2 − 1.73) 2 + (2 − 1.73) 2 + (2 − 1.73) 2 + (1 − 1.73) 2 ] = 0.45 manage the peer code review process. It was put into
4
commission in 2008 and 89 java files are playing their roles.
Similarly, X1 = 23, X2 = 3, X3 = 13, X4 = 15 and the mean
From the data in 3 pedagogical websites, as listed in Table
value μ =13.6, so the precise standard deviation is: V, the similar results to previous part A were found eventually.
1
σP = [(23 − 13.5) 2 + (3 − 13.5) 2 + (13 − 13.5) 2 + (15 − 13.5) 2 ] = 7.13
4
TABLE V. PROJECTS BY THE YEAR 3 STUDENTS IN 2006 THROUGH 2008
codingstandards coolpsp peercodereview
IV. CASES ANALYSIS Naming
Rough Precise Rough Precise Rough Precise
Based on the algorithms mentioned above, an evaluation Hungarian 27 145 1 12 0 0
Pascal 0 0 0 0 1 3
system was developed to test the consistency of identifier
Camel 263 1554 29 131 369 1759
naming of software programs. It can run at single file mode and Underscore 3 14 0 0 79 410
batch file mode. At single file mode, only one Java file can be Consistency 127.08 753.34 14.34 63.75 175.12 833.23
tested. While at batch mode, a folder name can be input
parameter and all the Java files in that folder and all its
subfolder can be calculated. To make sense of our system's C. Guidelines on identifier naming
performance, some cases were tested and analyzed. According to all the data in above tables, even though there
A. Testing results of students’ projects in three years are no strong evidences yet, some preliminary guidelines can
be presented:
The students in School of Software in Harbin Institute of • Hungarian naming convention is the strictest and had a
Technology (SoS@HIT) are required to finish their course great achievement with Microsoft’s success, but it
project on Software Engineering in Year three. Three up to five becomes more and more unpopular because of its
students make a team and select project topic. Some teams complexity. Therefore, a software organization should
finish their project in J2EE or Java application. To find some not take this notation as standard before its engineers
valuable information on the identifier naming conventions in have got ready for complying with this notation.
Java, the projects written in Java language in 2006, 2007 and
• Since the popularity of Java language worldwide, Camel
2008 were collected. By executing our application mentioned
naming convention is getting welcome greatly. Thus,

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 Camel and Pascal naming conventions should be more
emphasized and widely promoted.
• The prospect of Underscore shows quite common. As a
result, this naming convention is not recommended.
• Though each programmer can own his or her own
identifier naming convention, when a team is built up,
all programmers in it should follow the same naming
convention to keep the source programs highly readable
and maintainable.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Under the research framework of coding standards,
identifier naming convention was proposed as a new approach
to evaluating coding standards. This evaluation technique and
corresponding system are helpful to meet the requirements of
coding standards by software industry. In this system, identifier
naming conventions were summarized as four conventions -
Camel, Pascal, Hungarian and Underscore. Then such
techniques as compiler and regular expression were applied to
extract and recognize identifiers. The emergence times and line
positions were all reported and standard deviation was
calculated as the criterion of evaluating naming consistency of
a programmer or a software organization. Three websites were
taken as testing cases and developing status of our organization
on identifier naming conventions was analyzed.
The research in this paper is not perfect at all because there
is lots of work to do in near future, such as: (1) choosing
reasonable standard deviation for four identifier naming
conventions needs further statistic study; (2) after the
evaluation practice of naming conventions in Java language is
successful, the evaluation to C/C++ language should be
achieved; (3) more collaboration with universities and software
enterprises will be sought to get more data and information to
refine the evaluating approaches of identifier naming
conventions; (4) since many open source projects are widely
used in today’s software world, the empirical study on
identifier naming status based on open source projects will be
very challenging and interesting.
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