snake case

See also: snake_case

English

Examples
number_of_arguments find_new_objects

Alternative forms

• snake_case

Etymology

Coined in 2004 by Ruby programmer Gavin Kistner, from its resemblance to the long body of a snake, and by analogy with other naming schemes based on lower- and upper-case letters.

Noun

snake case (uncountable)

1. (programming) The practice of writing identifiers using underscores to separate words.
   • 2018, Camille McCue, Sarah Guthals, Helping Kids with Coding For Dummies®, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., →ISBN, page 130:

     Some evidence shows that coders are better able to read code (their code and code written by others) when using snake_case, not camelCase naming.

   • 2020, Jeanne Boyarsky, Scott Selikoff, OCP Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 11 Programmer I: Study Guide, Exam 1Z0-815, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., →ISBN, page 49:

     While both camelCase and snake_case are perfectly valid syntax in Java, the development community functions better when everyone adopts the same style convention.

   • 2020, Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time, O’Reilly Media, Inc., →ISBN:

     We were incorporating third-party Python libraries for some of our projects, leading to a mix within our codebase of our own CamelCase format with the externally preferred snake_case style.

Coordinate terms

• CamelCase
• kebab case
• Pascal case

Derived terms

• screaming snake case
• snake-cased

Further reading

• snake case on Wikipedia.Wikipedia