Best way to get rid of hungarian notation?

Question

Let\'s say you\'ve inherited a C# codebase that uses one class with 200 static methods to provide core functionality (such as database lookups). Of the many nightmares in th

Answer 1

I love Hungarian notation. Don't understand why you would want to get rid of it.

Answer 2

If you're gonna break code just for the sake of refactoring, I would seriously consider leaving i alone, specially, if you are going to affect other people in your team who may be depending on that code.

If your team is OK with this refactoring, and investing your time in doing this (which may be a time-saver in the future, if it means the code is more readable/maintainable), use Visual Studio (or whatever IDE you are using) to help you refactor the code.

However, if a big change like this is not a risk your team/boss is willing to take, I would suggest a somewhat unorthodox, half-way approach. Instead of doing all your refactoring in a single sweep, why not refactor sections of code (more specifically, functions) that need to be touched during normal maintenance? Over time, this slow refactoring will bring the code up to a cleaner state, at which point you can finish the refactoring process with a final sweep.

Answer 3

I am actually doing the same thing here for an application extension. My approach has been to use VIM mappings to search for specific Hungarian notation prefixes and then delete them and fix capitalization as appropriate.

Examples (goes in vimrc):

"" Hungarian notation conversion helpers
"" get rid of str prefixes and fix caps e.g. strName -> name
map ,bs /\Wstr[A-Z]^Ml3x~
map ,bi /\Wint[A-Z]^Ml3x~
"" little more complex to clean up m_p type class variables
map ,bm /\Wm_p\?[A-Z]^M:.s/\(\W\)m_p\?/\1_/^M/\W_[A-Z]^Mll~
map ,bp /\Wp[A-Z]^Mlx~

Answer 4

Just leave it alone. There are better uses of your time.

Answer 5

Right click on the variable name, Refactor -> Rename.

There are VS add-ins that do this as well, but the built-in method works fine for me.

Answer 6

Only change it when you directly use it. And make sure you have a testbench ready to apply to ensure it still works.