Rule of thumb [terminology]

Terminology¶

Usage¶

• n: size of a one-dimensional sequence
• m, n: matrix row and column counts
• i, j, k: short-lived generic indices
• idx: one explicitly named index
• pos: value-to-position mapping
• r, c: row and column coordinates
• dr, dc: coordinate direction offsets
• nr, nc: neighboring row and column
• l, r: moving positional boundaries or pointers
• lo, hi: lower and upper value bounds
• start, end: meaningful interval or substring boundaries
• top, bottom, left, right: four rectangular boundaries
• mid: midpoint or split position
• w, r: write and read indices
• x: generic numeric sequence element
• val: extracted, stored, or parsed value
• a, b: symmetric arithmetic operands
• res: constructed return collection
• ans: generic final scalar answer
• best: optimum found so far
• total: additive accumulation
• cnt: scalar count
• counts: item-to-count mapping
• freq: one frequency
• freqs: frequency mapping
• acc: general non-specific accumulator
• profit, gain: domain-specific financial quantities
• cur, prev, nxt: current, previous, and next state
• prev1, prev2: one and two positions back
• node: currently processed node
• root, head, tail: structural endpoints
• dummy: sentinel node
• slow, fast: different-speed pointers
• q: single compact BFS queue
• stack, heap: preserve data-structure semantics
• path: choices in the current backtracking branch
• front, back: bidirectional search frontiers
• level: nodes or values at one depth
• depth: numeric distance from a tree root
• seen: previously encountered values or states
• visited: graph or grid elements already traversed
• used: currently unavailable choices or resources
• cand: provisional candidate
• prefix, suffix: directional accumulation around an index
• rev: reversed representation under construction
• digit: one numeric digit
• rem: arithmetic remainder
• int_part: integer part of a fraction
• num_str: string representation of a number
• base: current exponentiation base
• carry: propagated arithmetic state
• partial: incomplete intermediate result
• mask: bitwise mask
• dist: distance value or distance table
• colors: graph-color assignments
• original: preserved initial state
• ordered: sorted or deliberately arranged state
• width: span or merge-run width
• size: general element count for a group
• parts: pieces that will be joined
• alphabet: complete substitution character set