Acronyms in CamelCase [closed]

Answer 1

Some guidelines Microsoft has written about camelCase are:

When using acronyms, use Pascal case or camel case for acronyms more than two characters long. For example, use HtmlButton or htmlButton. However, you should capitalize acronyms that consist of only two characters, such as System.IO instead of System.Io.

Do not use abbreviations in identifiers or parameter names. If you must use abbreviations, use camel case for abbreviations that consist of more than two characters, even if this contradicts the standard abbreviation of the word.

Summing up:

• When you use an abbreviation or acronym that is two characters long, put them all in caps;

• When the acronym is longer than two chars, use a capital for the first character.

So, in your specific case, getUnescoProperties() is correct.

Answer 2

disclaimer: English is not my mother tone. But I've thought about this problem for a long time, esp when using node (camelcase style) to handle database since the name of table fields should be snakeized, this is my thought:

There are 2 kinds of 'acronyms' for a programmer:

• in natural language, UNESCO
• in computer programming language, for example, tmc and textMessageContainer, which usually appears as a local variable.

In programming world, all acronyms in natural language should be treated as word, the reasons are:

1. when we programming, we should name a variable either in acronym style or non-acronym-style. So, if we name a function getUNESCOProperties, it means UNESCO is an acronym ( otherwise it shouldn't be all uppercase letters ), but evidently, get and properties are not acronyms. so, we should name this function either gunescop or getUnitedNationsEducationalScientificAndCulturalOrganizationProperties, both are unacceptable.

2. natural language is evolving continuously, and today's acronyms will become words tommorow, but programs should be independent of this trend and stand forever.

by the way, in the most-voted answer, IO is the acronym in computer language meaning (stands for InputOutput), but I don't like the name, since I think the acronym (in computer language) should only be used to name a local variable but a top-level class/function, so InputOutput should be used instead of IO

Answer 3

In addition to what @valex has said, I want to recap a couple of things with the given answers for this question.

I think the general answer is: it depends on the programming language that you are using.

C Sharp

Microsoft has written some guidelines where it seems that HtmlButton is the right way to name a class for this cases.

Javascript

Javascript has some global variables with acronyms and it uses them all in upper case (but funnily, not always consistently) here are some examples:

encodeURIComponent XMLHttpRequest toJSON toISOString

Answer 4

To convert to CamelCase, there is also Google's (nearly) deterministic Camel case algorithm:

Beginning with the prose form of the name:

1. Convert the phrase to plain ASCII and remove any apostrophes. For example, "Müller's algorithm" might become "Muellers algorithm".
2. Divide this result into words, splitting on spaces and any remaining punctuation (typically hyphens).
   1. Recommended: if any word already has a conventional camel case appearance in common usage, split this into its constituent parts (e.g., "AdWords" becomes "ad words"). Note that a word such as "iOS" is not really in camel case per se; it defies any convention, so this recommendation does not apply.
3. Now lowercase everything (including acronyms), then uppercase only the first character of:
   1. … each word, to yield upper camel case, or
   2. … each word except the first, to yield lower camel case
4. Finally, join all the words into a single identifier.

Note that the casing of the original words is almost entirely disregarded.

In the following examples, "XML HTTP request" is correctly transformed to XmlHttpRequest, XMLHTTPRequest is incorrect.

Answer 5

There is also another camelcase convention that tries to favor readability for acronyms by using either uppercase (HTML), or lowercase (html), but avoiding both (Html).

So in your case you could write getUNESCOProperties. You could also write unescoProperties for a variable, or UNESCOProperties for a class (the convention for classes is to start with uppercase).

This rule gets tricky if you want to put together two acronyms, for example for a class named XML HTTP Request. It would start with uppercase, but since XMLHTTPRequest would not be easy to read (is it XMLH TTP Request?), and XMLhttpRequest would break the camelcase convention (is it XM Lhttp Request?), the best option would be to mix case: XMLHttpRequest, which is actually what the W3C used. However using this sort of namings is discouraged. For this example, HTTPRequest would be a better name.

Since the official English word for identification/identity seems to be ID, although is not an acronym, you could apply the same rules there.

This convention seems to be pretty popular out there, but it's just a convention and there is no right or wrong. Just try to stick to a convention and make sure your names are readable.