Opening Windows in x64 ASM/Windows API Calls

[TimoVJL]

descriptive function and variable names are important too.

[jj2007]

descriptive function and variable names are important too.

Right

Though it's a matter of taste. I use some$ to indicate a string, and got eaten alive by a bunch of purists at the FreeBasic forum (where I am banned for life, hehe).

It's important to be consistent. Once upon a time there were languages that allowed 26 variables named A...Z

If you see fild MyR4 in some source, what do you think?

[TimoVJL]

If you see fild MyR4 in some source, what do you think?

floating point variable, a float, real4 is something, that comes up my mind.

[jj2007]

If you see fild MyR4 in some source, what do you think?

floating point variable, a float, real4 is something, that comes up my mind.

Exactly. And that it will miserably fail with fild

It's all about readability and transparency. For demos, I always use My$, MyR4, MyDw etc, in order to distinguish my own variables from WinAPI constants and the like. Micros*t uses Hungarian notation, or kind of, but they sometimes overdo it.

[NoCforMe]

Well, since we're now on variable naming (a valid programming topic if there ever was one), I get to explain my naming convention.

Disclaimer: This is not meant as thou shalt use my naming scheme because it's teh best in the world and if you don't use it you're a big dummyhead. This is just the way I do things. Works for me. If it works for you, fine. If not, let me know how you do things; maybe it's better than my way.

I divide my variables into two groups, globals and locals. All my globals are capitalized: TextHeapPtr is a global. All my locals start with lowercase: loopCounter is a local. So I know right away whether a variable is global or local. (That way I know whether to use OFFSET or ADDR to get the address of the variable.)

I try to be descriptive in the name to identify what type of variable it is: xxxxPtr is a pointer, xxxxCount is a counter. Then there are obvious ones: xxxxHandle. Other than this, I don't really have a "system" for IDing the type (certainly nothing like Micro$oft's "Hungarian" notation, which I find to be complete overkill, but that's because they use C which requires strong typing, as opposed to our MASM32 world where practically everything is just a DWORD ...).

The other convention is for constants: I preface all my constants with $: $backgroundColor is a constant.

Works for me. What's your system? I think it's important to have a system, one that works for you.

[mikeburr]

noC4me.. i use the names of my old Girlfriends,, with slight redaction to avoid comprehensive legal action eg SandraHell..  unfortunately i get a lot of code that does its own thing regardless of what i thought it might like to do ..gives me a lot of unneccesary [IMHO] output and generally doesnt work very well
regards mikeb

[hutch--]

I prefer things to be descriptive along with some arbitrary notion that I choose to use.

.data
  text db "Howdy, I am text data",0
  ptxt dq text                               ; ptxt being the pointer

I rarely ever use the old hungarian notation "sz", a left over from the 1990 SDK, I tend to name text.

  FileName db "Filename.ext",0
  pFile dq FileName

There is no simple rule, if its readable and makes sense, that is all you need.

With LOCAL variables, I tend to keep them at 4 or 5 characters so they are easy to read and line up when formatted. I generally capitalise data types and structures but have no particular preference for naming apart from being descriptive where possible.

[TimoVJL]

some of programmers just can be like artistic, so how to rule them ?

[hutch--]

Huh ?