Is it bad practice to use the same name for arguments and members?

Posted by stijn on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by stijn
Published on 2012-10-08T15:51:19Z Indexed on 2012/10/08 21:50 UTC
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Sometimes I write constructor code like

class X
{
public:
  X( const int numberOfThingsToDo ) :
    numberOfThingsToDo( numberOfThingsToDo )
  {
  }

private:
  int numberOfThingsToDo;
};

or in C#

class X
{
  public X( int numberOfThingsToDo )
  {
     this.numberOfThingsToDo = numberOfThingsToDo;
  }

  private int numberOfThingsToDo;
}

I think the main reason is that when I come up with a suitable member name, I see no reason to use a different one for the argument initializing it, and since I'm also no fan of using underscores the easiest is just to pick the same name. After all it's suitable. Is this considered bad practice however? Any drawbacks (apart from shooting yourself in the foot when forgetting the this in C#)?

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