Question

The ‘Naming convention’ page at Wikipedia contains the following statement under the Java conventions:

One-character variable names should be avoided except for temporary “throwaway” variables.

How ‘temporary’ does a variable need to be before it is an acceptable candidate for a one-character name?

Answer 1

I use single-letter names in only a few circumstances:

• Coordinates such as x and y.
• Loop iteration using for where the variable is block scoped and named i, j, k, …
• Generic type names, e.g., E for element, K for key, V for value, etc.

In all other cases I use longer names. Over time I find myself dropping shorter forms that I used to use. I rarely even abbreviate anymore. I can type fast, and real words are easier to type than abbreviations.

• childCount
• titleNormalizer
• colorLoader

This makes it a lot easier when I need to search for uses and modify the code a year later.