In general, you shouldn’t abbreviate names when you design your programmatic interface (see “General Principles”). However, the abbreviations listed below are either well established or have been used in the past, and so you may continue to use them. There are a couple of additional things to note about abbreviations:
Abbreviations that duplicate forms long used in the standard C library—for example, “alloc” and “getc”—are permitted.
You may use abbreviations more freely in argument names (for example, “imageRep”, “col” (for “column”), “obj”, and “otherWin”).
Abbreviation |
Meaning and comments |
|---|---|
alloc |
Allocate |
alt |
Alternate |
app |
Application. For example, NSApp the global application object. However, “application” is spelled out in delegate methods, notifications, and so on. |
calc |
Calculate |
dealloc |
Deallocate |
func |
Function. |
horiz |
Horizontal. |
info |
Information |
init |
Initialize (for methods that initialize new objects) |
int |
Integer |
max |
Maximum |
min |
Minimum |
msg |
|
nib |
Interface Builder archive |
pboard |
Pasteboard (but only in constants) |
rect |
Rectangle |
Rep |
Representation (used in class name such as NSBitmapImageRep) |
temp |
Temporary |
vert |
Vertical |
You may use abbreviations and acronyms that are common in the computer industry in place of the words they represent. Here are some of the better-known acronyms:
ASCII
XML
HTML
URL
RTF
HTTP
TIFF
JPG
GIF
LZW
ROM
RGB
CMYK
MIDI
FTP
Last updated: 2010-05-05