What is "naming convention"

n. A collection of rules followed by a set of names which allow users to deduce useful information, based on the names' character sequence and knowledge of the rules followed; such as Manhattan's East-West streets being called "Streets" and its North-South streets being called "Avenues".

A naming convention is a convention (generally agreed scheme) for naming things. Conventions differ in their intents, which may include to:

• Allow useful information to be deduced from the names based on regularities. For instance, in Manhattan, streets are consecutively numbered; with East-West streets called "Streets" and North-South streets called "Avenues".
• Show relationships, and in most personal naming conventions
• Ensure that each name is unique for some scope

In computer programming, a naming convention is a set of rules for choosing the character sequence to be used for identifiers which denote variables, types, functions, and other entities in source code and documentation.

Reasons for using a naming convention (as opposed to allowing programmers to choose any character sequence) include the following:

• to reduce the effort needed to read and understand source code;
• to enable code reviews to focus on more important issues than arguing over syntax and naming standards.
• to enable code quality review tools to focus their reporting mainly on significant issues other than syntax and style preferences.

The choice of naming conventions can be an enormously controversial issue, with partisans of each holding theirs to be the best and others to be inferior. Colloquially, this is said to be a matter of dogma. Many companies have also established their own set of conventions to best meet their interests.