Re: [boost] underscores in private class member names (was: [local] this_ or _this?)

Subject: Re: [boost] underscores in private class member names (was: [local] this_ or _this?)
From: Julian Gonggrijp (j.gonggrijp_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-04-14 06:31:40

Emil Dotchevski wrote:

> Granted, it is very unlikely _this to be used by the implementation,
> but I've seen compilers defining macros with leading underscore
> followed by a lowercase letter. There is no reason to insist on using
> leading underscores, in global scope or not.

Joshua Juran wrote:

> A name beginning with an underscore not followed by a capital letter is allowable at non-global scope (provided it doesn't contain two consecutive underscores).  Such names include _, _1, and _this.

Steven Watanabe wrote:

> The convention is that _xxx is used for placeholders.
> xxx_ is used when xxx is a keyword.

Dear Boosters,

All this talking of underscores makes me wonder about private class 
members. Several authors advise to give them names with a prefix 
underscore (followed by a lowercase letter). It does seem to have 
clear advantages: it visually marks the members as implementation 
details, and it also makes it easier to distinguish class member data 
from arguments and locally declared variables in member functions.

However, your opinions probably differ wildly on the matter. Would you 
consider it good practice to give private class members a name that 
starts with _[a-z] (regex)?

-Julian