Naming convention for upper case abbreviations [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.

Should a method that returns an XML stream be called

public Stream getXmlStream();

or instead

public Stream getXMLStream();

What's your opinion about that? What's considered best practice?

Answer 1

There is no one correct answer. This wiki extract is helpful:

Programming identifiers often need to contain acronyms and initialisms which are already in upper case, such as "old HTML file". By analogy with the title case rules, the natural camel case rendering would have the abbreviation all in upper case, namely "oldHTMLFile". However, this approach is problematic when two acronyms occur together (e.g., "parse DBM XML" would become "parseDBMXML") or when the standard mandates lower camel case but the name begins with an abbreviation (e.g. "SQL server" would become "sQLServer"). For this reason, some programmers prefer to treat abbreviations as if they were lower case words and write "oldHtmlFile", "parseDbmXml" or "sqlServer".

Answer 2

A "convention" is just that - it's not a "rule". However, I feel strongly that getXmlStream() is the best option. Consider multiple such terms: compare getSQLDBIOXML() to getSqlDbIoXml()

Answer 3

You should probably go for getXmlStream. Think of parseDBMXML or more complicated examples that make the code unreadable.

Comes from wikipedia CamelCase

Answer 4

I'm not saying it should be this way but for some, they can automatically adjust/expect that when there's a sequential string of upper-cased letters followed by lower-cased letters there is an acronym somewhere. My opinion is to go with getXmlStream() --it's something that I think is something easier for most people to read, compared to the number of those instantly able to read getXMLStream() with ease..

Answer 5

using public Stream getXMLStream(); will be advisable Its better to keep original meaning of abbreviation