It took me a long time but I finally got rid of the damn prefixes.

For 20 years I wrote variables like this:

GT_T001 = global internal table of T001
LS_T001 = local structure of T001
IV_BUKRS = input parameter with company
RV_MATNR = return parameter with material code
GO_CONSTS = reference to object instance of constants class

Then I stopped using L for local and V for value. Variables without L are implicitly local and variables without V are implicitly value:

GT_T001
S_T001
I_BUKRS
R_MATNR
GO_CONSTS

A few years ago I took a step forward, decided to follow Clean ABAP’s advice and ditched all the prefixes. This was only possible because my classes and methods are now so small and most variables have such intuitive names that I don’t need the prefixes to understand what they do:

T001_LIST
T001
COMPANY
R_MATERIAL
CONSTANTS

Finally about a year ago I decided to follow Clean ABAP’s advice to name all return parameters as RESULT. It’s now much clearer which variable needs to be filled with the result. And, as the name of the method describes its purpose, it’s always clear what each RESULT represents:

T001_LIST
T001
COMPANY
RESULT
CONSTANTS

So, like those ads for weight loss products, here’s the before and after:

GT_T001 => T001_LIST
LS_T001 => T001
IV_BUKRS => COMPANY
RV_MATNR => RESULT
GO_CONSTS => CONSTANTS

What about you? Do you still use prefixes? If you do, think about this for a moment: when you code in Python or C++ you don’t use any prefixes. Why? Because ABAP is probably the only programming language in which so many prefixes are used as a norm. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Thank you Frank Kehren for the photo.

Greetings from Abapinho.