"snake case" meaning in English

See snake case in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Etymology: Coined in 2004 by Ruby programmer Gavin Kistner, from its resemblance to the long body of a snake, and by analogy with other naming schemes based on lower- and upper-case letters. Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} snake case (uncountable)
  1. (programming) The practice of writing identifiers using underscores to separate words. Tags: uncountable Categories (topical): Programming, Writing systems Synonyms: snake_case Derived forms: screaming snake case, snake-cased Coordinate_terms: CamelCase, kebab case, Pascal case

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for snake case meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined in 2004 by Ruby programmer Gavin Kistner, from its resemblance to the long body of a snake, and by analogy with other naming schemes based on lower- and upper-case letters.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "snake case (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Programming",
          "orig": "en:Programming",
          "parents": [
            "Computing",
            "Software engineering",
            "Technology",
            "Computer science",
            "Engineering",
            "Software",
            "All topics",
            "Sciences",
            "Applied sciences",
            "Media",
            "Fundamental",
            "Communication"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Writing systems",
          "orig": "en:Writing systems",
          "parents": [
            "Writing",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "Human",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "coordinate_terms": [
        {
          "word": "CamelCase"
        },
        {
          "word": "kebab case"
        },
        {
          "word": "Pascal case"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "screaming snake case"
        },
        {
          "word": "snake-cased"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2018, Camille McCue, Sarah Guthals, Helping Kids with Coding For Dummies®, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., page 130",
          "text": "Some evidence shows that coders are better able to read code (their code and code written by others) when using snake_case, not camelCase naming.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020, Jeanne Boyarsky, Scott Selikoff, OCP Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 11 Programmer I: Study Guide, Exam 1Z0-815, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., page 49",
          "text": "While both camelCase and snake_case are perfectly valid syntax in Java, the development community functions better when everyone adopts the same style convention.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020, Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time, O’Reilly Media, Inc.",
          "text": "We were incorporating third-party Python libraries for some of our projects, leading to a mix within our codebase of our own CamelCase format with the externally preferred snake_case style.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The practice of writing identifiers using underscores to separate words."
      ],
      "id": "en-snake_case-en-noun-P0pI-z3t",
      "links": [
        [
          "programming",
          "programming#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "identifier",
          "identifier"
        ],
        [
          "underscore",
          "underscore"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(programming) The practice of writing identifiers using underscores to separate words."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "snake_case"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "computing",
        "engineering",
        "mathematics",
        "natural-sciences",
        "physical-sciences",
        "programming",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "snake case"
}
{
  "coordinate_terms": [
    {
      "word": "CamelCase"
    },
    {
      "word": "kebab case"
    },
    {
      "word": "Pascal case"
    }
  ],
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "screaming snake case"
    },
    {
      "word": "snake-cased"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Coined in 2004 by Ruby programmer Gavin Kistner, from its resemblance to the long body of a snake, and by analogy with other naming schemes based on lower- and upper-case letters.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "snake case (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "en:Programming",
        "en:Writing systems"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2018, Camille McCue, Sarah Guthals, Helping Kids with Coding For Dummies®, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., page 130",
          "text": "Some evidence shows that coders are better able to read code (their code and code written by others) when using snake_case, not camelCase naming.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020, Jeanne Boyarsky, Scott Selikoff, OCP Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 11 Programmer I: Study Guide, Exam 1Z0-815, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., page 49",
          "text": "While both camelCase and snake_case are perfectly valid syntax in Java, the development community functions better when everyone adopts the same style convention.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020, Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time, O’Reilly Media, Inc.",
          "text": "We were incorporating third-party Python libraries for some of our projects, leading to a mix within our codebase of our own CamelCase format with the externally preferred snake_case style.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The practice of writing identifiers using underscores to separate words."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "programming",
          "programming#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "identifier",
          "identifier"
        ],
        [
          "underscore",
          "underscore"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(programming) The practice of writing identifiers using underscores to separate words."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "computing",
        "engineering",
        "mathematics",
        "natural-sciences",
        "physical-sciences",
        "programming",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "snake_case"
    }
  ],
  "word": "snake case"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.