I inherited 1 million lines of C++ legacy code. Throughout the code variables like bCPCHAR bPCHAR, bCPDOUBLE and bPINT are used. They are defined like this:

• bCPCHAR: const char *
• bPCHAR: char *
• bCPDOUBLE: const double *
• bPINT: int *

I was thinking of removing this level of indirection, especially because bCPCHAR and bPCHAR get mixed up in the code quite a lot, and are so much harder to read than const char * and char *. But a colleague pointed out that this change will generate lots of noise in git blame. Which I think is a valid point.

I think I’m not be the first person with this problem. Is there a solution to it? Can you give me some advice?

Clean Code from Uncle Bob didn’t help me 😉