NYCPHP Meetup

[Mark Armendariz]

> From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org 
> [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On Behalf Of Ken Robinson

> The use of variable names like $i, $j, $k, etc for counters 
> is a hold over from early Fortran which declared that only 
> variables starting with certain letters could be integers. 
> The first letter was "i". I seem to remember that only the 
> letters i, j, l, l, m, n were used for integer variables, so 
> the use quickly became a "standard" and it's been carried 
> over into other languages through the use of examples written 
> by old time programmers.
> 
> Ken

All this time I'd thought it meant 'index' and was specifically to keep
loops short and sweet - and then j, k, etc just incrementally from index.
Thanks for info, Ken.

As for hungarian notation, I have my own similar convention that I try to
use everywhere (php, javascript, actionscript, python, etc).  I picked it up
from the developers at Cuban Council in SF.  A is array, I int, O is object,
etc.  My own addition to their convention is to make array counts an integer
with the same name as the array:

$aEmployees = $oEmployees->getAll();
$iEmployees = count($aEmployees);

May be hard to read for some, as it probably just looks like 4 of the same
variable, but for my own internal cpu, I can see I have 3 related variables
all with their own specific purpose.  It does very well for me, though
everyone has their habits for good or not.

Mark