Acceptable Abbreviations and Acronyms (original) (raw)

In general, you shouldn’t abbreviate names when you design your programmatic interface (see General Principles). However, the abbreviations listed below are either well established or have been used in the past, and so you may continue to use them. There are a couple of additional things to note about abbreviations:

Abbreviation Meaning and comments
alloc Allocate.
alt Alternate.
app Application. For example, NSApp the global application object. However, “application” is spelled out in delegate methods, notifications, and so on.
calc Calculate.
dealloc Deallocate.
func Function.
horiz Horizontal.
info Information.
init Initialize (for methods that initialize new objects).
int Integer (in the context of a C int—for an NSInteger value, use integer).
max Maximum.
min Minimum.
msg Message.
nib Interface Builder archive.
pboard Pasteboard (but only in constants).
rect Rectangle.
Rep Representation (used in class name such as NSBitmapImageRep).
temp Temporary.
vert Vertical.

You may use abbreviations and acronyms that are common in the computer industry in place of the words they represent. Here are some of the better-known acronyms: