Acceptable Abbreviations and Acronyms

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: