Client Naming Conventions

Naming Conventions for Functions and Files

While file-naming conventions are not always practical, they can be very useful. The most important naming convention used by the client source is prefixing a function name with an abbreviation of the module in which the function resides. For example, all public functions in the networking library have names that begin with NET_. Typically, functions private to a module have the same prefix, but the characters in the abbreviation are all lowercase, as opposed to all uppercase for exported functions.

Here is a list of common prefixes:

module prefix

layout engine LO_

parser PA_

networking library NET_

"front end" (platform specific) FE_

image library IL_

connection to java layer LJ_

compositor CL_

cross-platform utilites XP_

OS level utilites PR_

module	prefix
layout engine	LO_
parser	PA_
networking library	NET_
"front end" (platform specific)	FE_
image library	IL_
connection to java layer	LJ_
compositor	CL_
cross-platform utilites	XP_
OS level utilites	PR_

The use of prefixes offers two main advantages:

Module-specific prefixes before function names prevents name collisions between functions in different modules.
When looking at a stack trace, programmers can quickly tell where to begin debugging.

Here are two examples of file naming conventions currently in use: libmocha filenames begin with lm_*.c, and layout filenames begin with lay*.c.