Grammatically correct double-noun identifiers, plural versions

Question

Consider compounds of two nouns, which in natural English would most often appear in the form "noun of noun", e.g. "direction of light", "output of a filter". When programming, we usually write "LightDirection" and "FilterOutput".

Now, I have a problem with plural nouns. There are two cases:

1) singular of plural

e.g. "union of (two) sets", "intersection of (two) segments"

Which is correct, SetUnion and SegmentIntersection or SetsUnion and SegmentsIntersection?

2) plural of plural

There are two subcases:

(a) Many elements, each having many related elements, e.g. "outputs of filters"

(b) Many elements, each having single related element, e.g. "directions of vectors"

Shall I use FilterOutputs and VectorDirections or FiltersOutputs and VectorsDirections?

I suspect correct is the first version (FilterOutupts, VectorDirections), but I think it may lead to ambiguities, e.g.

• FilterOutputs - many outputs of a single filter or many outputs of many filters?
• LineSegmentProjections - projections of many segments or many projections of a single segment?

What are the general rules, I should follow?

Answer 1

1) i would use SetUnion and SegmentIntersection because i think in this case the plurality is implied anyway and it just looks nicer that way.

2) again, i would use FilterOutputs and VectorDirections, for the same reason. you could always use MultipleFilterOutputs if you want to be more specific.

but ultimately it's entirely down to your personal preference.

Answer 2

Unless you're getting hamstrung by a convention driven system (ruby on rails, cakePHP etc), why not use OutputsOfFilters, UnionOfSets etc? They may not be conventional but they may be clearer.

For example its pretty clear that ProjectionOfLineSegments and ProjectionsOfLineSegment are different things or even ProjectionsOfLineSegments....

Answer 3

Using plural forms of nouns can make them more difficult to read.

When you have a number of things, they are usually stored in a datastructure - an array, a list, a map, set, etc.. generically called a collection or abstract data type. The interface to a collection of items is typically part of the programming environment (e.g. Collections in java and .net, STL in C++) and is well understood by developers to involve quantities of items.

You can avoid pluralizing your nouns, and make the fact that you are dealing with multiple quantities explicit, and indicate how they are accessed by incorporating the name of the collection. For example,

• VectorDirectionList - the vectors and their directions are listed, e.g. some kind of Pair type. Works particularly well if you have a VectorDirection, combining a Vector and a Direction.
• VectorDirectionMap - if the vector directions are mapped from vector.

Because it's a collection type, dealing with multiple objects is understood as it is endemic to a collection type. It then puts it in the same class as SetUnion - a union always involves at least 2 sets, and a VectorDirectionList makes it clear there can be more than one VectorDirection.

I agree about avoiding homonyms where the word has more than one word class, e.g. Filter, (and actually, Set, although to my mind Set would not really be used in a class name as a verb, so I interpret it as a noun.) I originally wrote this using FilterOutput as an example, but it didn't read well. Using a compound for Filter may help disambiguate - e.g. ImageFilterOutputs (or applying my own adivce, this would be ImageFilterOutputList.)

Avoiding plural forms with class names seems natural when you consider that an instance of a class is itself always one item - "an instance". If we use a plural name, then we get a mismatch - an instance trying to imply that it is multiple things - it itself is just one thing, even if it references multiple other things. The collection naming above builds on this - you have an instance which is a list, a map etc so there is no mismatch.

I'm assuming you are talking about programming language constructs, although the same thinking applies to tables/views. These are understood to involve quantities of items and table names are consequently often singlular (Customer, Order, Item) even though they store multiple rows. Many-to-Many Mapping tables are usually compounds of the entities being related, e.g. relating orders to items - OrderItem. In my experience, using plurals for table names makes the SQL difficult to read.

To sum up, I would avoid plural froms as they make reading harder. There are sure to be cases where they are unavoidable - where using the plural form is more readable than creating a huge name of nested entities and collections, but these are the exception than the rule.

Answer 4

I think that while general naming conventions and consistency are important, but in a very very tight/tricky algorithm, clarity should trump convention. If it helps, use veryLongAndDescriptiveIdentifiers.

Answer 5

What are the general rules, I should follow?

1. Make it Clear -- for both visual and aural thinkers.
2. Make it Specific but Accurate.
3. Make it pass the "crowded room" or "emergency phone call" test.

To illustrate with the SetsUnion example:

• "SetsUnion" is right out; It's easily confused for a typo and speaking it (even in your head) will confuse it for "Set's Union" (Or worse).

• The plural is also implied, so the 2nd 's' is redundant. SetUnion is better but still ambiguous.

• UnionOfSets is clearer and should be the bare minimum standard.

• But all of these, so far, are uselessly vague (unless you are working with pure mathematical theory).
  The term really should be specific. For example, "Red cars", "Programmers who spent too much time on esoterica", etc.
  These are all unions of sets, but they tell you something useful. ;-)

.
Finally, Phil Factor had the right of it. To paraphrase:

Can you shout a (term) out across a crowded room and have it keyed in, and successfully (used), by a listener at the other side?

Try yelling, "SetsUnion," or even, "UnionOfSets," across a packed Irish bar. ;-)

Answer 6

What's wrong with Union()?

Moreover, "union of sets" turns into "sets' union" (the two sets' union is ...); I'm sure I'm not the only person who's okay with CamelCase but not CamelsCaseMinusApostrophes. If it needs an apostrophe to make sense, don't use it. Set.Union() reads exactly like "union of set(s)".

Mathematations will also say "the (set) union of A and B", or rarely "A and B's (set) union". "The sets' union of A and B" makes no sense!

Most people will also see Vector[] vectors and Directions[] vectorDirections and assume that vectors[i] corresponds to vectorDirections[i]. If things really get ambiguous, I use something like vector_by_index and vectorDirection_by_index. Then you can have Map<Filter,Output> output_by_filter or Map<Filter,Output[]> outputs_by_filter, which makes it very obvious what the key is (this is very important in Objective-C where it's completely non-obvious what type the keys or values are).

If you really want, you can add an s and get vectors_by_index, but then consistency gives you the silly outputss_by_filter.

The right thing is, of course, something like struct FilterState { Filter filter; Output[] outputs; }; FilterState[] filterStates;.

Answer 7

There's a grammatical misunderstanding lying behind this question. When we turn a phrase of form:

1. X of Y

into

2. Y X

the Y changes grammatical role from a noun in the possessive (1) to an adjective in the attributive (2). So while one may pluralise both X and Y in (1), one may only pluralise X in (2), because Y in (2) is an adjective, and adjectives do not have grammatical number.

Hence, e.g., SetsUnion is not in accordance with English. You're free to use it if it suits you, but you are courting unreadability, and I advise against it.

Postscript

In particular, consider two other possessive constructions, first the old-fashioned construction using the possessive pronoun "its", singular:

3a. Y, its X

the equivalent plural:

4a. Ys, their X

and their contractions, with 4b much less common than 3b:

3b. Y's X
4b. Ys' X

Here, SetsUnion suggests it is a rendering of the singular possessive type (3) Set's Union (=Set, its Union), where you intended to communicate the plural possessive (4) Sets, their Union (contracted to the less common Sets' Union).

So it's actively misleading.

Answer 8

I'd suggest singular for the first word: SetUnion, VectorDirections, etc.

Do a quick class search in your IDE, for: Strings*, Sets*, Vectors*, Collections*

Anyway, whatever you choose, be consistent throughout the whole application.

Answer 9

Choose what works best for you. The idea that program source code (or even snippets of program source code) should be 'grammatically correct' english (or any other natural language) is very odd. The idea that there is an authority, even one as omnipotent as SO, with the right answer is also odd.

There's plenty of good advice in the other answers here, there's a fair amount of bizarre advice too. I'm surprised that no-one else has yet recommended Code Complete. My copy is at home so I can't check what it has to say about this particular issue but the book does contain plenty about the naming of things.

So, to answer your question:

• do not seek general rules, construct rules that work for you in your circumstances;
• treat all advice (even my advice) as no more than advice;
• accept that constructing answers to questions such as you ask is part of your responsibility as a software developer (one you may share with other members of your teams, you shouldn't be doing this isolation).

Oh, finally, if you do make a rule for yourself consider their impact on the use of abbreviations in names. Personally I think that plural forms for abbreviations are just plain wrong.

Answer 10

The more I think about this question, the more I think that standards exist for a reason.

Re:

What are the general rules, I should follow?

ISO-11179 should be the bare minimum.

Among some of its gems:

• The name should be descriptive and unambiguous of the concept that it is expressing.
• Each named item should have a unique purpose. For example UnionsOfNewark in one context should have exactly the same meaning in another context.
• The name should not be a plural.
• Only commonly understood abbreviations should be used.