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In generally I'm using the standard naming stated in PEP-8 for variables. Like:

delete_projects connect_server

However sometimes I can't find any good name and the name just extend to a long one:

project_name_to_be_deleted

I could use pr_nm_del , but this makes the code unreadable. I'm really suffering finding good variable names for functions. Whenever I begin to write a new function I just spent time to find a good variable name.

Is there any standard for choosing certain abbreviations for well known variable names like, delete,project,configuration, etc. ? How do you choose short but good and readable variable names ?

This question might be not depend directly to Python, but as different programming languages uses different variable names formatting I thought I limit this question to Python only.

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    Ah, naming-conventions... as they say, the two hard problems in computer science are cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors ;) Commented Dec 5, 2010 at 12:52
  • Why not use the standard short forms like: del for delete, cnfg for configuration and so on? Commented Dec 5, 2010 at 12:55
  • @sukhbir well that's the problem. As a newbie that didn't work for any other project before, it just get difficult what to choose. For example with PEP-8 I knew that I should use variables like name_variable but I don't know what to choose for short variables or abbreviations. I mean is there any documentation or any standard for that ? I couldn't find anything related to this. Commented Dec 5, 2010 at 13:00

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pr_nm_del? You might as well let a cat name it. I believe abbreviations should be avoided at all cost, except well-known/obvious ones (like del, as mentioned in the comments - that one's even a language keyword!) that save a whole lot of typing.

But that doesn't mean overly verbose identifiers. Just as context is important to understand statements in natural languages, identifiers can often be kept much shorter (and just as understandable) by referring to context. In your example, project_name is perfectly fine - the procedure is already called delete_project, so project_name obviously refers to the name of the project to be deleted. Even name alone might be fine. No need to state that again by appending _to_be_deleted.

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If you really have to put a name for the to-be-deleted project, why not call it obsolete_project_name ?
I would go for doomed_project_name.
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In your example, you have a function called delete_project. Wondering what to call the variable that stores the project to be deleted? Just 'project'!

def delete_project(self, project): del self.projects[project]

Simple.

Variable names don't have to be fully descriptive. Context can lend a lot to how we understand a particular name at a particular point in time. No need to say "this is the project to be deleted" when discussing a function that deletes project.

If you find function names are too long, they're probably doing too much. If you find variable names are becoming too long, think about their purpose in the current context, and see if part of the name can be implied.

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This is a problem that kind of solves itself when you're doing OOP. The subject (project, configuration) is the class and the verb (delete, etc) is the method name ie:

class Workspace(object): def delete_project(self, project): log.info("Deleting", project.name) ...
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I think long names are acceptable provided that they are descriptive. With a good editor/IDE, short names cannot save typing, while long but descriptive names can save the time of reading your code. So the length of the reading time of the name is much more important than the actual length of the name.

As for your example, project_name_to_be_deleted is fine. If you want to shorten it, I will suggest using project_name_to_del since del is a well-known abbreviation for delete (you can even find this in your keyboard). And the use conf as configuration is also popular. But don't go further. For example, proj2del is not a good idea.

Also, for internal/local things, it's fine to use short-not-so-descriptive names.

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Very few names have "standard" abbreviations. What you think is "common" or "standard" is not the same for someone else. The time spent setting a good name is well invested, as code is read much more often than it is written. As an example, I've seen "configuration" abbreviated as "config" "cnfg" "cfg" "cnf" ...so the lesson is - don't abbreviate unless there is a very well known abbreviation of it!

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