Question

In many code reviews they suggest dont use i, j as variables..Is there any specific reason to avoid using i, j in for loop.

e.g

for (int i=0; i<10; i++ )
{

}

Answer 1

The basic guideline is to use variable names that are meaningful. i isn’t very meaningfull, however, inside a for loop it often isn’t a problem, when the scope of the for loop is really small. One letter variables for loop variables is very intuitive for most developers, and when that variable is only used in one or two lines, it isn’t that big of a deal. When the scope gets bigger on the other hand, it gets harder to follow what i actually is. But than again, you should normally not have more than one line of code (just a method call) in a for loop anyway, to keep your code as readable as possible.

Still, even with a loop with a body of a single line, I would prefer a more meaningful name than i. For instance, what exactly does that i variable represent? If you can give it a more meaningfull name, such as index or rowNumber, you should do so. It makes your code more understandable.