How do you name your counters?

I'm a geek. I want to know how you name your counters!

Always seems to be x,c, or i for me.

integers: i,j,k,l
floats: w,x,y,z

-Adam

I may add that for any simple loop, 9/10 times I will use "c". There's something holy and pure about having "c++" in the FOR command. *grins*

I only use single-letter variables in FOR loops, starting with 'a' and moving through the alphabet. I also use '++a' instead of 'a++' in the FOR loop statement since it is slightly faster. (It doesn't have to make a temporary variable like the postfix version does. If you don't need it, why make it?)

All my globals start with lowercase 'g', use first-letter-caps and no underlines.

My local variables are all lowercase with underscores separating words.

Functions are like globals but without the 'g' prefix.

Parameters are also like globals but with 'a' instead of 'g'. (I don't always do this.)

Any counting variable not part of a FOR statement line uses a descriptive name. ( ex: 'gAvatarCount' or 'line_num' )

I'm lazy and the less i have to type the better (and the more i can fit on the screen at once). I find it hard to grok scripts that have more comments then code (I don't care what you say it does just get on with it, and let me see what it does).

Anyways for junk variables I use letters. Junk variables being temporary variables, paramaters passed from an event or variables in short scripts.
I usualy a -> n when i'm too lazy to figure out which ones are available for use i'll pick one randomly from p and up.
w in most of my scripts is resereved as a global integer (or list) containing listen handles. I don't know why i use w for this, always have.

rarely i'll use other lettered global varriables. In most scripts i use lettered variables I did not have the intention of releasing them to the public.

i, j, k mostly.
sometimes ctr. If I'm moving through positions on a list, I use pos, or index, or (rarely) idx. Sometimes I just use the letter that comes to mind first.

*** EDIT ***

ok, so sometimes what we say is different from what we do

I took a look at 5 scripts of mine that I thought represented the kind of scripting I usually do. Within those five scripts, I used some looping construct 10 times, 8 of them used the variable "i" for the counter. The other two were "deck_pos" and "letter_at".

general counters, like for loops, i, j, k etc.

Other counts, something short but descriptive, especially if I am going to use it in several places. len, texcount etc.

comedy cx answer because I like assembly

If it's intended to be nothing but a basic for counter, I use a, b, c.

Other things get full descriptive names.

basically t

will extend to t1,t2,t3 etc...

Maybe because i am dutch, and although i script/code in english, this has been very old trait of mine (cbm 64). And the dutch word for counter is 'teller'.

I use i or x almost all the time because that's what the wiki examples use. ^.^;

i, j, k, or sometimes just a generic foo.

most people were taught single leters for time restraints but its better for debugging purposes to use more descriptive variables.

I seem to use 'x'. Probably due to the magazines which published "type-in" programs during my Atari 800 and Apple IIe days. Wish I'd saved some of those mags now. Though I've probably used descriptive variables in more complex scripts.

Though I was taught to use i, j, k, etc. when I first learned to code in C++, and I maintained this practice when cobbling together code in Fortran, I've since been influenced by mathematics and usually use n first, and then i, j, and k. Though explanatory naming greatly improves the readability of code, there's something I find awkward about having such long variable names.

I think descriptive names for disposable loop variables are vastly overrated. For meaningful variables, sure.

The only time you will see a one-letter, totally undescriptive variable in my scripts is when it is being used for a for loop iterator over some collection of items (like a list, or object inventory). I really try to avoid modifying the iterator in the for loop (that's what the i++ is for ). I start with i and go from there. I only use i++ due to habit... I need to break that ^_^. Before looping over a list I define its length in a variable called "len", "num" for inventory.

==Chris

Fortran, right?

I use i, j, k, l, m... for generic loop iterators, w, x, y, z for coordinate iterators. If a loop counter has some meaning other than "index", I base the variable name on that.

For other variables, if it's a global, it begins with "g". If it's supposed to be constant, it begins with "c".

i use usually i and j for my for loops , declared as global variables so i dont need to redefine em all the time

i,j,k in for loops.
When I actually care about the resulting count, I will name it numBlah as in "number of Blahs".

If it's for a loop: i, x, y, z

For anything else, I use a full name describing it's purpose. For a generic global counter I use: counter

That's counter intuitive. </rimshot>

i,j,k or cur<name of thing>

'i'. Just, 'i'.

On an unrelated note, can anyone tell me why my script logic keeps breaking? I can't figure it out.




Okay okay, I'm lying. But I do use 'i' and sometimes 'j' for generic for-loop counters. If it's being used to store an actual, useful value, then I give it a pretty, descriptive name, like 'fluffy'.