What's the name for hyphen-separated case?

Question

This is PascalCase: SomeSymbol

This is camelCase: someSymbol

This is snake_case: some_symbol

So my questions is whether there is a widely accepted name for this: some-symbol? It's commonly used in url's.

Answer 1

There isn't really a standard name for this case convention, and there is disagreement over what it should be called.

That said, as of 2019, there is a strong case to be made that kebab-case is winning:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=kebab-case,spinal-case,lisp-case,dash-case,caterpillar-case

spinal-case is a distant second, and no other terms have any traction at all.

Additionally, kebab-case has entered the lexicon of several javascript code libraries, e.g.:

• https://lodash.com/docs/#kebabCase
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/kebab-case
• https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/components-props.html#Prop-Casing-camelCase-vs-kebab-case

However, there are still other terms that people use. Lisp has used this convention for decades as described in this Wikipedia entry, so some people have described it as lisp-case. Some other forms I've seen include caterpillar-case, dash-case, and hyphen-case, but none of these is standard.

So the answer to your question is: No, there isn't a single widely-accepted name for this case convention analogous to snake_case or camelCase, which are widely-accepted.

Answer 2

It's referred to as kebab-case. See lodash docs.

Answer 3

It's also sometimes known as caterpillar-case

Answer 4

Adding the correct link here Kebab Case

which is All lowercase with - separating words.

Answer 5

As the character (-) is referred to as "hyphen" or "dash", it seems more natural to name this "dash-case", or "hyphen-case" (less frequently used).

As mentioned in Wikipedia, "kebab-case" is also used. Apparently (see answer) this is because the character would look like a skewer... It needs some imagination though.
Used in lodash lib for example.

Recently, "dash-case" was used by

• Angular (https://angular.io/guide/glossary#case-types)
• NPM modules
  • https://www.npmjs.com/package/case-dash
  • https://www.npmjs.com/package/dasherize

Answer 6

This is the most famous case and It has many names

• kebab-case: It's the name most adopted by official software
• caterpillar-case
• dash-case
• hyphen-case or hyphenated-case
• lisp-case
• spinal-case
• css-case
• slug-case
• friendly-url-case

Answer 7

I've always called it, and heard it be called, 'dashcase.'

Answer 8

There is no standardized name.

Libraries like jquery and lodash refer it as kebab-case. So does Vuejs javascript framework. However, I am not sure whether it's safe to declare that it's referred as kebab-case in javascript world.

Answer 9

I'd simply say that it was hyphenated.

Answer 10

Worth to mention from abolish:

https://github.com/tpope/vim-abolish/blob/master/doc/abolish.txt#L152

dash-case or kebab-case

Answer 11

In Salesforce, It is referred as kebab-case. See below

https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/component-library/documentation/lwc/lwc.js_props_names

Answer 12

Here is a more recent discombobulation. Documentation everywhere in angular JS and Pluralsight courses and books on angular, all refer to kebab-case as snake-case, not differentiating between the two.

Its too bad caterpillar-case did not stick because snake_case and caterpillar-case are easily remembered and actually look like what they represent (if you have a good imagination).

Answer 13

I've always known it as kebab-case.

On a funny note, I've heard people call it a SCREAM-KEBAB when all the letters are capitalized.

Kebab Case Warning

I've always liked kebab-case as it seems the most readable when you need whitespace. However, some programs interpret the dash as a minus sign, and it can cause problems as what you think is a name turns into a subtraction operation.

first-second  // first minus second?
ten-2 // ten minus two?

Also, some frameworks parse dashes in kebab cased property. For example, GitHub Pages uses Jekyll, and Jekyll parses any dashes it finds in an md file. For example, a file named 2020-1-2-homepage.md on GitHub Pages gets put into a folder structured as \2020\1\2\homepage.html when the site is compiled.

Snake_case vs kebab-case

A safer alternative to kebab-case is snake_case, or SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE, as underscores cause less confusion when compared to a minus sign.

Answer 14

My ECMAScript proposal for String.prototype.toKebabCase.

String.prototype.toKebabCase = function () {
  return this.valueOf().replace(/-/g, ' ').split('')
    .reduce((str, char) => char.toUpperCase() === char ?
      `${str} ${char}` :
      `${str}${char}`, ''
    ).replace(/ * /g, ' ').trim().replace(/ /g, '-').toLowerCase();
}

Answer 15

This casing can also be called a "slug", and the process of turning a phrase into it "slugify".

https://hexdocs.pm/slugify/Slug.html