Question

In some languages where you cannot override the () operator, I have seen methods with a single underscore, usually for ‘helper’ classes. Something likes this:

class D10
{
   public function _()
   {
     return rand(1,10);
   }

}

Is it better to have the function called Roll()? Is a underscore fine? After all, there is only one function, and it removes the need to look up the name of the class.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

I would say it is a bad style. You can not infer behaviour from the name of the function if it simply an underscore.

In order to know what it does you need to read the code, or documentation.

(On a side note, I don’t think D10 is a good name for a class either).