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Ask HN: Naming convention for a percentage stored as a value from 0 to 1

2 points by escot ↗ HN
Say you’re storing a percentage like “state tax”. You store it as a decimal: 0.4 means 40%. What do you call this type when you need to name a db column or a variable? Technically it is not a percent until you * 100.

“Decimal fraction” seems most correct but is very verbose. No one is writing taxRateDecimalFraction as a var name.

4 comments

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warrenm
how about `taxrate`?

Or don't store it as a decimal between 0 and 1 - but as a value between 0 and 100 (with possible decimal points, of course), and just call it `taxpct`?

warrenm
>No one is writing taxRateDecimalFraction as a var name.

Wait til you see Java or Hungarian Notation

bell-cot
"rate", or "tax_rate", or "state_rate", or "state_tax_rate".