Hydrogen bonding is of persistent theoretical interest. According to a modern description  integrates both the intermolecular O:H lone pair ":" nonbond and the intramolecular  polar-covalent bond associated with  repulsive coupling.
Quantum chemical calculations of the relevant interresidue potential constants (compliance constants) revealed large differences between individual H bonds of the same type. For example, the central interresidue  hydrogen bond between guanine and cytosine is much stronger in comparison to the  bond between the adenine-thymine pair.
Theoretically, the bond strength of the hydrogen bonds can be assessed using NCI index, non-covalent interactions index, which allows a visualization of these non-covalent interactions, as its name indicates, using the electron density of the system.
Interpretations of the anisotropies in the Compton profile of ordinary ice claim that the hydrogen bond is partly covalent. However, this interpretation was challenged.
Most generally, the hydrogen bond can be viewed as a metric-dependent electrostatic scalar field between two or more intermolecular bonds. This is slightly different from the intramolecular bound states of, for example, covalent or ionic bonds. However, hydrogen bonding is generally still a bound state phenomenon, since the interaction energy has a net negative sum. The initial theory of hydrogen bonding proposed by Linus Pauling suggested that the hydrogen bonds had a partial covalent nature. This interpretation remained controversial until NMR techniques demonstrated information transfer between hydrogen-bonded nuclei, a feat that would only be possible if the hydrogen bond contained some covalent character.