Naming convention for non-virtual and abstract methods

Posted by eagle on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by eagle
Published on 2010-04-08T04:19:47Z Indexed on 2010/04/08 4:23 UTC
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I frequently find myself creating classes which use this form (A):

abstract class Animal {
  public void Walk() {
    // TODO: do something before walking

    // custom logic implemented by each subclass
    WalkInternal();

    // TODO: do something after walking
  }
  protected abstract void WalkInternal();
}

class Dog : Animal {
  protected override void WalkInternal() {
    // TODO: walk with 4 legs
  }
}

class Bird : Animal {
  protected override void WalkInternal() {
    // TODO: walk with 2 legs
  }
}

Rather than this form (B):

abstract class Animal {
  public abstract void Walk();
}

class Dog : Animal {
  public override void Walk() {
    // TODO: do something before walking

    // custom logic implemented by each subclass
    // TODO: walk with 4 legs

    // TODO: do something after walking
  }
}

class Bird : Animal {
  public override void Walk() {
    // TODO: do something before walking

    // custom logic implemented by each subclass
    // TODO: walk with 2 legs

    // TODO: do something after walking
  }
}

As you can see, the nice thing about form A is that every time you implement a subclass, you don't need to remember to include the initialization and finalization logic. This is much less error prone than form B.

What's a standard convention for naming these methods?
I like naming the public method Walk since then I can call Dog.Walk() which looks better than something like Dog.WalkExternal(). However, I don't like my solution of adding the suffix "Internal" for the protected method. I'm looking for a more standardized name.

Btw, is there a name for this design pattern?

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