Maybe grepping for the variable is a bad example. I have seen bugs where a variable has been accidentally defined twice though due to inconsistent abbreviations

Maybe grepping for the variable is a bad example. I have seen bugs where a variable has been accidentally defined twice though due to inconsistent abbreviations. I'm struggling to think of any case where "tmp" couldn't be replaced by a better name. It's always going to be a temporary something. I'm not arguing against short, concise names where they won't cause problems. Variable names of e.g. x, y, i all have their place.