Question

I have read a lot of popular standards manuals for open source PHP projects.

A lot enforce underscores for variables spaces, and a lot enforce camelCase.

Should global functions and variables be named differently to class methods/properties?

I know the most important thing is consistency, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on this.

What would you recommend?

Answer 1

I find camelCase a little more pleasant to type, because I find the underscore a bit awkward to type.

Don’t use global variables.

I avoid procedural coding in PHP, I find OOP is easier to keep things organized. Besides, doesn’t PHP have enough stuff in it’s global namespace already?

Generally I try to stick to:

• Classes are StudlyCaps singular or plural nouns, as appropriate: Item, Row, DB, Items.
• Variables are lowercase nouns, singular or plural depending on what they hold: $column, $name
• Constants are singular upper-case nouns: DEBUG, TYPE_FOO.
• Methods are camelCase, and begin with singular verbs (get, perform, do), followed by a noun (singular or plural) describing what it operates on or returns (getThing(), getThings())

It definitely depends on what you’re coding for. If I’m coding PHP or PEAR, I use camelCase. If I’m doing Python/Django, I use under_scores. If I’m writing ELisp, I use dashed-separators.