Naming in C | Rajdeep Malakar

Naming is Hard

One wise man once said (did he?):

There are only two hard things in Programming: Naming Variables and Cache Invalidation.

We’ll discuss the latter later.
Naming variables is extremely tough. And functions? You’re in a cult now.

How I do

Functions

First of all, the devil’s sword, functions. For them, I use PascalCase:

int Add(int left, int right) {
  return left + right;
}

int Factorial(int n) {
  if (n == 0 || n == 1) return 1;
  return n * Factorial(n - 1);
}

int Strlen(char *str) {
  const int MAX = 1024*1024*1024;
  int result = 0;

  for (int i = 0; str[i] != NULL && i <= MAX; i++) {
    result++;
  }

  return result;
}

The only exception to this, is the main function. And ofc, existing Standard Functions are also exempt.

Structures

So, here comes structs, for which, I use PascalCase:

struct Person {
  char *name;
  int age;
};

struct Point {
  int x;
  int y;
};

typedef struct {
  int data;
  struct Node *next;
} Node;

Then, use them as such in functions:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

struct Node* CreateNode(int data) {
  struct Node *new_node = (Node *)malloc(sizeof(Node));
  if (!new_node) {
    printf("Memory Allocation failed!\n");
    exit(1);
  }

  new_node->data = data;
  new_node->next = NULL;
  return new_node;
}

void PrintNode(struct Node *head) {
  struct Node *current = head;
  while (current != NULL) {
    printf("%d -> ", current->data);
    current = current->next;
  }
  printf("NULL\n");
}

int main() {
  // Creating Nodes
  struct Node *head = CreateNode(1);
  head->next = CreateNode(2);
  head->next->next = CreateNode(3);

  // Print the Node
  PrintNode(head);

  // Free the memory
  Node *current = head;
  Node *next;
  while (current != NULL) {
    next = current->next;
    free(current);
    current = next;
  }

  return 0;
}

 Edit