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Generally variables are named in the singular Car car; and arrays and list with the pluras: List<Car> cars; or Car[] cars; But what about nouns like fish or media* that are already plural?
*already lost the battle to have the class called Medium.
There are a couple of ways to tackle this problem. None of them are perfect, but you can find a workable solution. The key is that your team needs to come up with a standard approach to resolving this and to stick with it.
Here are some of the options:
The singularly named variable will start with one case (lower case) while the plural variable will start with the other case (upper case).
var Fish = new List<fish>(); //plural
var fish = Fish[0]; //singular
Example:
var Fishes = new List<fish>(); //plural
var fish = Fishes[0]; //singular
or
var Meese = new List<Moose>(); //plural
var Moose = Meese[0]; //singular
Example:
var SchoolOfFish = new List<Fish>(); //plural
var Fish = SchoolOfFish[0]; //singular
My suggestion would be to try to use a more meaningful name for the list variables. I know this is sometimes hard to do, though.
For example, instead of List<Car> cars, use something like List<Car> parkedCars. Instead of Fish[] fish, use something like Fish[] availableFish.
availableFish is also an availableFish. I don't think is a great solution.
availableFish and need another variable to hold one of the items in the array, well then you just need to choose a different appropriate descriptive word. Perhaps selectedFish would work. If not that, then something else. Use a thesaurus to find the right word. If nothing else, you could even just use fish for a limited-scope variable, because the name wasn't already taken for the array.
Jul 5, 2017 at 18:21
availableFish" in the code above. An array of availableFish-s means availableFish[] insertvariablenamehere;. The only reason you're creating confusion is because you're using an inaccurate English description of the code. Some accurate English readings of the code include: "there is an array, availableFish", "there is an array named availableFish", "there is a Fish array named availableFish which contains the available Fish objects"...
Fish in the array availableFish is a Fish".
I think names like List<Fish> fish are perfectly fine. We use "fish" as both singular an plural in writing; why not do the same in code?
If you want a singular Fish fish in the same scope, say for iterating, can always switch to List<Fish> fishList or List<Fish> listOfFish.
for( Book book : books ) so the singular is already taken or going to be used for something else.
fishList or listOfFish is not perfect because it is coupled to the implementation. If List is changed to Collection or Set the name implies something that is no longer the case.
List and Set are interfaces with somewhat different properties. Arguably it would be appropriate to rename fishList → fishSet to reflect the change in semantics.
Feb 21 at 20:26
carList/carArray