Hacker News Reader

Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

I have to ask... why 'm_'?

I don't understand why you have been downvoted for asking "why m_?". Is everybody on here supposed to know everything about everything, else you get downvoted into grey unreadability?

Personally, I think that bashing/penalizing ignorance (and I mean the word ignorance literally, as being uninformed about a topic, no offense here whatsoever) is one of the lowest forms of abuse. It says much more about the downvoter than it does about the downvoted. And this not even considering the fact that searching online for "m_" isn't going to help you answer your own question.

If everybody just downvoted the questions they deem unworthy of an answer because "you are supposed to know this", there would be no questions answered.

Sorry for the OT.

"c++ m_ prefix" turns up several hits for me.

> I don't understand why you have been downvoted for asking "why m_?".

Because complaining about coding conventions on a discussion about a design pattern is noise and adds nothing to the discussion.

I fail to see the "complaining" side in all of this. I interpreted the question as "what's the meaning behind 'm_'?". Until I read your comment, it didn't occur to me to see it in a complaining light, also because I imagine the question would have been worded differently in that case (e.g. "why m_ instead of <something_else>?").

And judging by other comments to the question, I wasn't alone, luckily.

This is the often case where some HN downvotes you to heck and the next hour bunch shoots you up to the moon. There is pretty much no predictability and it all depends on whether your responder makes a good case.

I think it is supposed to mean member, but i don’t remember, common enough practice though

Yes it stands for member. The notation had been used in conventions like Hungarian notation (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation) and WinApi.

It's a simplified form of Hungarian notation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com