variable-shame

You named it data. It processes user authentication tokens. It is not "data".

---

A CLI tool that scans your codebase for terrible variable names and publicly shames them — with receipts.

Install

npm install -g variable-shame

Or run directly:

npx variable-shame

Usage

# Scan current directory
variable-shame

# Scan a specific path
variable-shame --path ./src

# Scan only JS or TS or Python files
variable-shame --path ./src --lang js
variable-shame --path ./src --lang ts
variable-shame --path ./src --lang py

What it detects

Single-letter variables outside of loop contexts:

const x = getUserId()  // x? Really?
let a = fetchToken()   // Not acceptable.

Generic / lazy names that could mean anything:

const data = await fetch('/api/users')  // "data". Revolutionary.
let result = processPayment(card)       // result of what?
const stuff = getThings()               // i cannot.

Abbreviation crimes — saving 3 keystrokes, losing all meaning:

const usr = await getUser(id)   // just... user
const msg = buildEmail(params)  // message. it's one more syllable.
const cfg = loadConfig()        // config. you can do it.

Boolean lies — booleans that don't announce themselves:

let loaded = false    // isLoaded
let valid = true      // isValid
const enabled = flag  // isEnabled

Sample output

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  VARIABLE SHAME REPORT
  Scanned: 47 files, 3,241 lines
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CARDINAL SINS (score 5)
  src/auth.js:47
    let x = getUserId()
    -> x? Really? This held someone's identity. You named it with a key press.
    Try: xValue / xItem / xRecord

  src/api.js:12
    const data = await fetch('/api/users')
    -> Every variable is data. This tells us nothing.
    Try: userData / apiResponse / fetchedItems / payload

LAZY NAMING (score 3)
  src/user.js:89
    const result = processUser(userData)
    -> "result" of what? For whom? Since when?
    Try: parsedToken / validatedUser / processedItem

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STATS:
  Total shames found: 23
  Shame index:        84% disgraceful
  Worst file:         src/utils.js (8 shames)
  Most common sin:    "data" (used 6 times)

  By category:
    Single-letter vars : 3
    Generic names      : 14
    Abbreviation crimes: 4
    Boolean lies       : 2

  Verdict: YOUR CODEBASE IS A CRIME SCENE.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Exit codes

• 0 — No shame found (good job, suspicious)
• 1 — Shame found (expected)

Exceptions (we're not monsters)

• i, j, k inside for loops — allowed
• e in catch blocks — allowed
• Legitimate acronyms — not flagged

License

MIT