On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 03:48:17PM -0400, Eli Barzilay wrote: > With the trend of having shorter names, I'll try suggesting it again. > Looking at some random slides (the ones from Matthew's talk), one > thing that is -- still -- very strikingly inconvenient is code like > > (parameterize ([current-error-port (current-output-port)]) > ...) > > IMO, anyone who is not coming from some kind of Scheme background > would view this as ridiculously long. If they're renamed to the usual > names, things look much better: > > (parameterize ([stderr (stdout)])
My first thought is that the names current-error-port and stderr suggest different concepts. stderr is the standard error stream corresponding to POSIX file descriptor 2. current-error-port is an abstraction mechanism that allows you to control where error messages are directed. If stderr were to be bound in #lang racket, based on the above I'd expect it to be bound to a port corresponding to the standard error stream, not bound to a parameter controlling which port error messages go to. I realize such a stderr binding would not be particularly useful for most Racket programs, so I'm not advocating having such a binding. I'm just saying the name "stderr" implies something different than "current-error-port", that "current-error-port" better denotes the purpose of the parameter, and that in this case I like the more accurate name is better than the short name. If parameterize forms like your example are the main motivation, perhaps a new function or syntax would be more to the point? e.g. something called with-errors-to-output... Also, I see that these names appear to already be available as proposed via the preprocessor/mzpp and preprocessor/mztext modules. Finally, It occurs to me that this is the second time in several weeks I'm responding to a thread about changing names. Hopefully my comments are thoughtful and not just reactionary. David _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
