On Tue, 11 Jul 2017 10:41:37 -0700, "Father Chrysostomos via RT" <perlbug-followup@perl.org> wrote: > On Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:55:51 -0700, davem wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 12:45:48PM -0400, Sawyer X wrote: > > > Does anyone have any comments on this? Tony, Dave, Zefram? *Karl*? :) > > > > My opinion on this sort of proposal (and it's an opinion which has gotten > > stronger over time (*)) is rarely/never to add a new alias name to an > > existing function. > > > > Alias names just increase the cognitive load. If the old names were > > confusing, having more names will just increase the confusion. > > > > Before, you would have to remember that a particular function foo() is > > badly named and doesn't do what you might expect it to do, based solely on > > the name. > > > > Afterwards, you have to remember that that are two functions foo() and > > bar(), one is deprecated (which one?), one is badly named (which one?), > > but they both do the same thing (Or do they? Sigh. Let's check the > > documentation one more time). > > > > Life is now harder. > > > > (*) My opinion firmed over AvFILL(). It was a weird name, but I was used to > > it. Now I can never remember what the new alias is called (just looked > > it up - av_top_index()). In hindsight, I would have voted against adding > > av_top_index. > > I agree with everything you have said. I brought up the same > objection when this proposal was first put forward, but I thought I > had lost the debate. Well, at least there are two of us now. :-) Count me in: three. I like the way Dave has written down my feelings :) -- H.Merijn Brand http://tux.nl Perl Monger http://amsterdam.pm.org/ using perl5.00307 .. 5.27 porting perl5 on HP-UX, AIX, and openSUSE http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/ http://www.test-smoke.org/ http://qa.perl.org http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/Thread Previous | Thread Next