Funny variable names

[Jason Christian]

Worked on a system that had 2 character prefixes (depending on the file) followed by 4 char field names (same across files), so there were fun items like xxPORN (Purchase Order Number) all over the place.

[peterchen]

I have a variable calL (calibration of L), commented as "Superman!"

Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchy

[jimgale]

I had a coworker who named variables after Egyptian Gods - based on the code intention's personality (matching the gods). Ra, Hathor, Isis, Anubis. [Personally I think of Stargate with these names]. But she knew their histories well. It's harder to get any more abstract and removed from the real semantic meaning of the variable than that.

[Andrew Leeder]

I once worked on an Activity Planning System for a new company who had yet to decide on a name. The programming team called it the Newco Application Planning System - NAPS for short. About the time it was finished, the new company decided to call themselves Keir Rogers, so overnight NAPS became ... ~A

[Stefan_Lang]

The necessity of adapting our huge code base slowly to an object oriented standard sometimes forces me to some obscure tricks to prevent having to change hundreds of references to functions or former simple data structures which now turned class. For instance when I created a class for a simple plane in 3D instead of the various types of existing structures already being used with a conglomerate of functions that worked on either of the types or just took the defining point coefficient arrays as arguments, I created a long list of constructors to accomodate each of the existing calling 'conventions'. For one particular constructor I had to be very creative though, as it was supposed to take two arguments, one of which would _always_ be a NULL value instead of the double* pointer usually passed for this argument. That 0 value would indicate a specific type of plane. (the case for non-NULL pointers was already covered by a constructor taking arguments of type CPoint and or CVector, both of which were defined to be implicitely created from a pointer to double - unfortunately that case would also create an ambiguity for the compiler if I just created another constructer with an argument type of double*). My solution was to not use double* as the argument type for that NULL pointer, but a pointer to an internal struct type named only_null_allowed_here. As the struct was privately declared, no one outside the class could ever create a variable of type only_null_allowed_here*, nor would a pointer variable of any type be accepted for this constructor. But writing '0' as an argument was perfectly acceptable. The point of this struct's name was the compiler error it would create for anyone trying to use an improperly typed pointer here: it would say something like: 'cannot access private member ... only_null_allowed here'

[Mr Crisp]

Programming in the games industry a couple of amusing names came up. Well functions. Working on a flying game the cockpit recieved bullet damage with the function CockHoles()! Also you could change your flying helmet colour, decals etc the interface was called GUIhelmet. Chorkle!

[ScottM1]

But then what would he call his SQLExceptions?

[NeverHeardOfMe]

OK, so my textboxes are called txtThis, labels lblThat etc... call me puerile, but I stil smile when naming my File Upload conrtols fuOther.... even had one simply called fu2 once :)

[SpoonLord]

A project I used to work on had a module called 'cunit'. I was shocked when I first saw it.

[hoernchenmeister]

That calls for a BlastHymen() setter ;)

[BillW33]

One of my favorite silly variable names, written by a co-worker late at night, he named a boolean variable "JuatABool". :)

Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.

[Stefan_Lang]

Well in your case it was just a matter of misreading, but in our application, some of the older code that used hungarian style names (i. e. names consisting of one or more abbreviated words) is consistently using the fragment 'anal' to denote something to do with 'analysis'. :doh:

[Julian Nicholls]

A lot of the active-low Power-on resets in the hardware I'm working on are called PORn too.

[BrainiacV]

A variable name I'll never forget was for a conveyor system I worked on with a friend. He had this naming convention of 8 characters max, using the normal names you'd like for the variable divided by the number of words gave you the number of characters to take from each word to create the variable name. Ex. PRINT SPOOLER became PRINSPOO and (my favorite) SHIPPING STATION CONTROL LOOP became SHSTCOLO (pronounce sheh sta co low). But another buddy wnt the other direction creating long names. One of his SmallTalk objects was called FireHunterSeekerBlowBackTo. In high school the PALD-8 Assembler for the DEC PDP-8 only allowed 6 character names. So when it came to having a counter, we started with COUNT, removed the vowels for CNT, started adding them back giving CONT and (I'll let you figure out the logical conclusion here).

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

[Sound Dude]

I always use funny names for endless loops that wait for a condition then break. as in: const bool TheAZCardinalsStillSuck = true; while (TheAZCardinalsStillSuck) { ... } although the above example almost broke in 2008 - 2009, that code is secure this year.

[Slice24]

A colleague of mine used a variable called tibet. Once he was finished with the variable, he was then able to free(tibet)

[Alan Burkhart]

I downloaded some code a few years ago in which all the buttons in the interface had names like buttGo, buttSort, buttYes, buttNo...

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

[Joan Dineiro]

I had a collegue who had to write a credit app program. They named the database table CRAP and the columns in the table were all like CRAP_descript, CRAP_Type, etc. The boss made them rename everything. Bosses have no sense of humor

JodiYoda

[agolddog]

Similarly, I once worked for a firm where the servers were all Vegas casinos: MandalayBay, Venetian, etc, and the developer machines were all games: CaribbeanStud, Blackjack, etc. Not such a bad thing in a small shop, but it took a while to get up to remembering who was what.

[Steve Poulter]

I once had to deal with some MS-Basic code written by a bored kid who amused himself with variable names including:

dim eieio

(Think Old MacDonald...)