On Thursday, 9 July 2015 at 02:58:32 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 7/8/2015 7:22 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Thursday, 9 July 2015 at 00:11:17 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
Which is why I simply picked the name Arguments. The s suffix
means plural,
and doesn't give any preconceived notion about what kind of
collection it is.
It's a convention I've been using in the dmd source for some
time now, and
have found it to be natural and pleasing.
Instead, it gives the idea that they're used specifically for
arguments, which
they aren't. They get used for a variety of things. Also, the
term Arguments is
going to be really confusing - just like talking about
std.container.Array gets
confusing, because the term array is already used for other
stuff, and it's
never clear what folks are talking about unless they get
specific. At least when
you use the term TypeTuple, everyone knows what you mean, even
if it's a sucky
name. Going with something like Arguments or Parameters or
Aliases is just going
to breed confusion.
What about the 's' suffix?
It might work in a situation where the main word is clearly
unique, but when you're talking about something like Argument or
Alias, adding an s on the end does not help at all. It's far too
easy to confuse it with other concepts in the language that have
the same name, whereas putting something like List on the end
wouldn't have that problem - e.g. no one is going to confuse
AliasList for anything else, but if we had Aliases, it would be
really easy to think that someone was referring to aliases like
this
alias foo = bar;
and misunderstand what they were talking about - especially in
verbal conversations.
- Jonathan M Davis
