# Naming Conventions

TADS 3's standard libraries follow a naming convention similar to that used for the Java system classes. For consistency, the intrinsic function name and intrinsic class method definitions provided with the compiler follow this same set of conventions. Here's a summary of the naming rules:

- All identifiers use mixed-case letters. After the initial letter, small letters are used, except that if an identifier consists of more than one word, the first letter of each additional word is capitalized. It isn't necessary to capitalize the first letter of an embedded word in a few cases, such as when the pair of words could reasonably be rendered in ordinary writing as a compound word or with a hyphen (for example, "sublist" could be used rather than "subList").
- A class name starts with a capital letter.
- Function, method, property, and object instance names start with a small letter.
- A manifest constant name (a "#define" symbol that expands to a simple numeric or other constant value) starts with a capital letter.
- #define symbols that define names that are meant to behave like global variables use an initial "g" prefix (for example, "gActor" in the adv3 library).
- Macros used only to control conditional compilation (through the "#ifdef" preprocessor directive) use all capitals, with underscores to separate words.
- Other macro names should follow the appropriate convention for their intended use. For example, a macro that's used to define a class should start with a capital letter, and a macro that is used like a function or method call should start with a small letter.

The standard libraries sometimes use an abbreviation or acronym as though it were an ordinary word, to avoid really long names or long runs of capital letters. For example, the regular expression functions use "rex" instead of "regularExpression," because the latter is too long (rexMatch, rexSearch, etc.), and the String method "htmlify" doesn't capitalize the letters "HTML."

TADS 3 System Manual
Table of Contents | Opening Moves > Naming Conventions
Prev: Typographical Conventions Next: Hello, World!