Question

Is there some sort of standard or convention on naming JavaScript prototypes?

I find myself in the need to add methods on prototypes of both native and user-defined functions quite often, and so I usually store the prototypes themselves in local variables:

var functionPrototype = Function.prototype;
var objectPrototype = Object.prototype;
var arrayPrototype = Array.prototype;

Although the names are very descriptive, they are unnecessarily long.

Answer 1

I believe that there’s no standard convention on naming prototype objects. So I created my own standard.

As I mentioned in my comment above choosing a standard is just a matter of style or preference. However once you choose one you should stick to it.

Here’s the standard I use now:

var functProto = Function.prototype;
var objectProto = Object.prototype;
var arrayProto = Array.prototype;

var boolProto = Boolean.prototype;
var numberProto = Number.prototype;
var stringProto = String.prototype;

var classProto = Class.prototype;
var rectProto = Rectangle.prototype;
var myClassProto = MyClass.prototype;

In general here are the guidelines for naming a prototype:

1. It should be in camel case.
2. It should end in Proto.
3. If the abbreviation of the constructor name is more than 3 characters then use it.
4. Otherwise use the full name of the constructor.

This keeps very long constructor names like Function, Boolean and Rectangle short while keeping longer names long.