Actually LAURENS it is a personal preference (I don't necessarily mean each individual user's preference, but the preference of the company or team that set the standards).

M$ does state using str, int, sng, etc. etc. but some companies and teams use differenct standards. My last company used s for string, i for int, n for single (can't remember them all) but they were a documented standard that all who worked in the company followed.

These were standards that were put in place eons ago when mainframes were the only computers in the company and DASD was expensive hence the shortened abbreviations to save as much space as possible.

So to maintain consistency, they just kept the old standards.

I would personally be hesitant about working for a person who would mention the prefixes of variables during the interview (unless he just mentions that they have standards in place and asks YoungBuck if he would have a problem following a different set of standards).

As I stated, the most important thing is to remain consistent.