style guideline for naming variables?

[Duncan Smith]

John Salerno wrote:
> After reading the PEP, I'm still not quite sure if there is a
> recommended (or widely preferred) method of naming variables. Here are
> the relevant bits:
> 
>> Global Variable Names
>>
>>       (Let's hope that these variables are meant for use inside one
>> module
>>       only.)  The conventions are about the same as those for functions.
>>
>>       Modules that are designed for use via "from M import *" should
>> use the
>>       __all__ mechanism to prevent exporting globals, or use the the
>> older
>>       convention of prefixing such globals with an underscore (which
>> you might
>>       want to do to indicate these globals are "module non-public").
>>
>>     Function Names
>>
>>       Function names should be lowercase, with words separated by
>> underscores
>>       as necessary to improve readability.
>>
>>       mixedCase is allowed only in contexts where that's already the
>>       prevailing style (e.g. threading.py), to retain backwards
>> compatibility.
> 
>>
> 
>> Method Names and Instance Variables
>>
>>       Use the function naming rules: lowercase with words separated by
>>       underscores as necessary to improve readability.
>>
>>       Use one leading underscore only for non-public methods and instance
>>       variables.
>>
>>       To avoid name clashes with subclasses, use two leading
>> underscores to
>>       invoke Python's name mangling rules.
>>
>>       Python mangles these names with the class name: if class Foo has an
>>       attribute named __a, it cannot be accessed by Foo.__a.  (An
>> insistent
>>       user could still gain access by calling Foo._Foo__a.) 
>> Generally, double
>>       leading underscores should be used only to avoid name conflicts
>> with
>>       attributes in classes designed to be subclassed.
>>
>>       Note: there is some controversy about the use of __names (see
>> below).
> 
> 
> It refers to instance variables, which I assume includes all variables
> that aren't global, and the suggestion is to follow function
> conventions, which would be this:
> 
> some_function
> 
> But this seems awkward to me. someFunction seems nicer, but it is
> specifically mentioned not to do this for new code.
> 
> So I'm just curious how other people handle the multiword situation.
> Underscores, or Pascal case?

SomeClass

someFunction

some_variable

FWIW

Duncan