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Hungarian Notation

Microsoft uses a standardized way of naming variables, functions, constants, and classes that is known as Hungarian notation. You've already seen an example of this in the WinMain() function. The Hungarian notation for variable names consists of several prefixes which reveal the variable's data type. These are the prefixes used:

In addition, variable names consisting of more than one word have each word capitalized, with no underscores. For instance, a pointer to an area of memory used for player data might be called lpPlayerData. This standard notation is often helpful in understanding code. For instance, in the WinMain() function discussed above, without seeing the function header, Hungarian notation tells you that hinstance and hPrevInstance are handles, lpCmdLine is a 32-bit pointer, and nCmdShow is an integer.

Function naming under Hungarian notation follows the same rules as variables, minus the prefixes. In other words, the first letter is capitalized, and the first letter of subsequent words in the function name are capitalized as well. An example might be ShowCharacterStats().

The rule for naming constants is that all capital letters are used, and underscores often separate words within a constant's name, or separate a prefix from a constant's name. The constant WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN is an example. One thing you'll see often in Windows is that constants are often prefixed by an abbreviation of the function with which they are meant to be used. For example, the constants SW_SHOWNORMAL, SW_MAXIMIZE, and SW_MINIMIZE, which I mentioned briefly earlier, have the SW_ prefix because they are meant to be used as arguments to a function called ShowWindow().

Finally, classes are named in the same manner as functions, except with a capital C preceding the name, so an example class for a vehicle in a racing game might be CVehicle.

You don't have to use this naming convention in your programs, but you should be familiar with it, because all Microsoft products follow these guidelines. It is rather convenient if you can convince yourself to start using it. I'm still working on that. Anyway, moving on...

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