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Postings from February 2022
2022-2-24 12:44 Karl Williamson <public@khwilliamson.com> wrote: > I believe using 'trimmed' is a mistake, and this email is a last ditch > effort to make that case. > > There is zero precedent in the core for using a past participle to name > a function that takes an argument and returns some perturbation of it. > We do not have 'reversed' nor 'sorted', nor 'crypted' nor 'hexed' nor > 'packed' nor 'absd' 'orded' 'lcfirsted' ... > > We do, however, have in fact some functions in the core whose names are > a past participle: 'defined', 'tied', and just outside of core: > Scalar::Util::blessed. All these functions return a boolean, not at all > like 'trimmed' would do. > > So 'trimmed' would actually be the sole member of a new class of names. > I hear that there is some wish that 'sort' had originally been named > 'sorted'. But it wasn't, and making a new name that corresponds to that > forlorn hope but violates all existing precedents will only sow confusion. > > When I was 13-ish, I learned in Math class that f(x) is pronounced 'f of > x'. That didn't change in my education all the way through getting a > Bachelor's degree in Math. Following along with that, I pronounce > > @x = sort(@y) > > as "Set x to the sort of y". I suppose one could pronounce it as "x > becomes the sorted version of y", but that's really not following > standard English usage. > > My assertion is that 'trimmed' violates precedents in core Perl and in > standard usage. > > I wish that the few functions that change their operand in place, like > chomp, instead left the argument unchanged, and returned the > transmogrified result. But it's too late to change them; and they are > outliers. Hence, using them as a justification for 'trimmed' is wrong. > > And there maybe a better word than trim or its derivatives. 'trim' can > mean both take away' and 'add' I sew on trim as a border, or to trim > the Christmas tree. > > I don't have a strong request for function naming, but I feel "trim" is good because the first Scott Baker suggested was "trim". I also feel that PSC can respect the opinions of users.Thread Previous | Thread Next