Essential C Programming Variable Naming Rules and Best Practices

she follows some naming conventions or you can say rules for naming their variables the need for making this

lecture separately is that this is one of the most avoidable topics while learning C programming because we

usually don't care how we name our variables as it is not the case that everything is allowed in C programming

as we want therefore studying naming conventions is equally important name of a variable is

composed of letters or maybe the combination of letters both uppercase and lowercase and digits rules for

naming variables are as follows you cannot start your variable name with a digit

for example globe is a valid variable name on the other hand to globe is invalid even though underscore counts as

a letter but don't begin variable names with underscore although you cannot begin with underscore because huge

number of variable names beginning with underscore are resolved for system use using them in your program may cause

problems in your code execution therefore it's better to avoid such names C language is case sensitive means

uppercase and lowercase letters are distinctive writing where where where where where

all are different you can say it is interesting to know that traditionally lowercase letters are used for naming

the variables and uppercase letters for naming symbolic constants will talk about symbolic constants when we study

the use of hash define later special characters such as at the rate hound percentile power

ampersand star etcetera other than underscore are not allowed in the name of variables note maybe some special

characters use in naming variable can work but most of them failed like when I put dollars somewhere in between or even

at the beginning of the variable name it works but if I choose some other special character like percentile it produces

error therefore battle is to avoid the use of special characters but yes I told you to avoid using underscore at the

beginning but you can use it in between the name of the variables blanks or you can say white spaces are not allowed in

between for the separation of different parts of the name of variable for example in my variable is invalid

because of the blank space over here you can see blank space compiler won't be able to recognize it as a single

variable instead if you want to improve readability you can use underscore instead of blank space int my variable

is now a valid variable name as you can see over here now I'd put underscore instead of that blank space keyword

slight if-else for wild switch int float long double etc are result words you cannot use them in naming your variables

although all these keywords are lowercase and if you insist to use them in naming your variables you can make

either a or multiple letters uppercase and then you can use them like this finally there

is one important tip do not use longed name for your variables it may not look good and using them later in your

program is not that easy because you have to write down those long names again and again in your code whenever

you want to use them that's it for now see you in the next lecture [Applause]

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