That's a good point. If in the scope of the variable, you're only concerned with calculating its hash (or some similar function that is qualitatively indifferen

That's a good point. If in the scope of the variable, you're only concerned with calculating its hash (or some similar function that is qualitatively indifferent to it), and not testing or parsing it or making any specific use out of it, then 'data' makes sense (though I'm guessing 'file' is arguably a better descriptor of the data in this example, if indeed that's what you're hoping to find in NSData, I get your point, and 'foo' might do just as well). That has to be a fairly unusual case, though.