Naming Placeholder Identifier

ID

csharp.naming_placeholder_identifier

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

medium

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Naming Convention

Language

CSharp

Tags

naming

Description

Reports local variables, parameters and fields whose name is a placeholder such as foo, bar, baz, tmp, temp, myVar or obj. The match is case-insensitive but exact, so dataSource is not flagged. The placeholder list is configurable via the placeholderNames property.

A binding whose name equals the unqualified name of its declared type (for example Data data) is not flagged — naming a value after its type is descriptive, not a placeholder.

Rationale

Placeholder names survive from quick prototyping and never communicate intent. A reader seeing tmp or foo cannot tell what the value represents and has to reconstruct it from the surrounding code. Replacing the placeholder with a name that states the value’s role makes the code self-documenting.

var bar = LoadConfig();         // FLAW — placeholder name
var tmp = 2;                    // FLAW — placeholder name
var total = 3;                  // OK — descriptive
var dataSource = "db";          // OK — not an exact match
void Use(Data data) { }         // OK — name matches its type

Remediation

Rename the identifier to a descriptive name that communicates what the value represents, for example configuration, subtotal or currentUser.

References