The world's two worst variable names

My second reaction is: it's pretty rare that you don't have to go back and reread code much later. The cost of reading is increased enormously by bad variable names.

My third reaction is: once you get in the habit of naming things, it becomes much easier to think of names.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BadVariableNames

I do not think any name can be declared a bad variable name until the context of the problem is laid out. Certain names may be bad for a particular use in a certain context, but they may also be the right name in another context. Any declarations without context are premature.


PERFORM 10000-SITUATION UNTIL DETERMINATION-MADE


While hacker culture commonly defines "foo" and "bar" as "junk" or "unimportant" variables, that is totally dependent on the reader's being aware of that facet of hacker culture, and the programmer's adherence to that rule-of-thumb. So, I'm not sure that $data is really worse than $foo.

In a similar vein, I'd assert that any unintelligible variable name, such as $xyzzy or just plain $a, is worse than $data.

$total = $price * $qty;

$total2 = $total - $discount;

$total2 += $total * $taxrate;

$order_total = $price * $qty;

$payable_total = $order_total - $discount;

$payable_total += $payable_total * $taxrate;

The lesson here is that there are no hard and fast rules in naming things; you should simply be very conscious about naming things in your code, and keep an eye on the many issues of readability.

I just mentioned it because it highlights the underlying principle. Admittedly, very few people need to be told to pick shorter identifiers, so understandably it's an often skipped over facet of naming that speaking names are sometimes inappropriate. However, teaching dogmatism (even unintenionally) does not lead to maintainble code. Let's remember to mention the "when not to" cases as well.

In both cases (though yours may have been intentional to point out the error), the variable total was renamed to $order_total in two separate instances, while in the third, it was renamed to $payable_total instead.

In the original, the total2 variable gets added to the result from the multiplication of the original total times the tax rate. In the rewritten, we see it added to the result of multiplication between the same tax rate but against it's own variable information.

Good catch.

And I'm always bemused by how common this reply is. What's the point of posting "I know that already"? Surely someone else besides the poster was the intended receipient of the message then.

$available_funds = $purchase_order_value + $availble_credit;

I often suspect that some of the misspellings are the result of having coworkers for whom English is not a first language, and that I can usually forgive (and make the occasional "s" -> "c" change in the code they check in). However, some of the worst stuff has come from programmers who were supposedly native English speakers.

IF true_ = False AND NOT false_ = False Then
IF true_ = false_ THEN
x = 5
ELSE
x = 7
END IF
END IF

... and so on

I think I lasted about 5 minutes before having to lie down in a dark room !

CALL CALCULATE (I, dont, need, these)

int b = 10;

char r = 'c';

int i = 1;

for (int a = 0; a <= b; a++)

{

   int n = b + a;

}

Amazing really, probably earning more than me now :(

Apparently he didn't know how to handle undefined database-fields. To solve this he would use queries that automatically inserted hyphens in those fields. His code then would have to differentiate between the hyphens from the queries and the hyphens that he used in hidden controls on his forms.

His best function was one that was called "removeallhyphens" with a return as the first statement.

  foreach $data( sort keys %data ) {

    push @data, $data{$data};

  }

Needless to say, that was my first cleanup.

I HATE long variable names. I'd rather name a variable $x and put a comment about "This is the number of cats," rather than name somthing $number_of_cats. I hate typing...

And somtimes programmers try their hardest to confuse lookers on. Like the priesthood of old, we can't have the common people knowing that we spend most development time (1) hacking through spagetti logic, or (2) playing Doom (or it's equivalents)...

I once wrote a program for a Interdistrict High School Computer Science competition where I only used Homonyms and odd spellings for variables, and laughed at the judges consternation (if(q > que); then cue += (q / qu * Q + QUE); QuE = cue + q;). Lots of fun!

For example, in emacs, just press M-/. There must be dozens of editors that can do this.

@data = split (/,/,$string);
@atad = reverse(@data);
@atad2=@data;

I'll spare you the rest of this Genius' work... (Suffice to say that 'use strict' was not used!

Anyway, how about $variable and $varible? *sheesh* ;)