Brian Cryer's Glossary of IT Terms with Links
Hungarian Notation
- Hungarian Notation
- A naming convention from Microsoft in the 70s, where variables where
named to indicate their type.
Hungarian notation is a naming convention invented by Charles Simonyia from Microsoft, in which one or more letters are added to the start of variable names to indicate the type of the identifier. It is known as Hungarian Notation because (i.) the prefixes make variable names less easily readable (unless you are used to Hungarian Notation) and (ii.) because Simonyi was originally from Hungary. Its use is mainly confined to Windows programming environments there are many passionate arguments for and against its use. Generally Hungarian Notation can be useful in weak-type languages but unnecessary in strong-typed languages where the compiler will warn if a variable of one type is used where a different type is expected.
The use of Hungarian notation has now generally fallen out of fashion.
For more information see:
- Greg's guide to Hungarian notation (archived).
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260976(VS.60).aspx - Republication of Simonyi's original work.
- http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HungarianNotation
- http://everything.explained.at/Hungarian_notation - Hungarian notation explained.