'Is it PEP8-appropriate to replace words into numbers (e.g. book4students, key2value, etc.) in my function names?

I am relatively new in the programming community, and recently I acknowledged the existence of PEP8, a sort-of codex which aims to improve readability. As listed in the said PEP8 documentation (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/), variables and function names should be "lower_case_with_underscores". I wonder if my habit is violating this convention.

Specifically, I often replace words with numbers whenever possible, to abbreviate and shorten the names of variables and functions.

  • col4keys
  • things2do

I searched for the answer here and there, but nothing seems to be addressing my specific inquiry.



Solution 1:[1]

I highly recommend to use a linter such as flake8 to find such errors, i.e. PEP-8 violations. It is really good in finding those and pretty much the standart tool as of today.

In your specific case I believe it is not really a violation, so feel free to name your variables this way if you must -- at least flake8 will not complain.

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Solution Source
Solution 1 Bastian Venthur