So I guess I got included on this as the resident language professor :-) (although I probably should subscribe to p6 users at some point) I didn't see the whole thread in the e-mail I got copied in on, so apologizes if I repeat much.
I'll spare everyone all the linguistic details, but suffice it to say, invocant and invoker are functionally equivalent. The former is a nominalized adjective, and the latter a noun proper. They mean "the one that invokes (calls)". We can use either, but I'd recommend we be very consistent. Invocant seems to be the preferred, so let's use it exclusively. On the other side, we have invoked and invokee, which in English share a similar distinction (although nominalizing the former often sounds odd, and adjectifying the latter would probably be read as missing a genitive 's). Summed up, we should avoid using invocant to refer to a method that's being called. Generally, just calling it a "method" is sufficient, but if need be, I'd go with "the invoked method". We probably can write documentation to avoid the formalisms altogether, though, by saying something to the effect of > Opens the file [represented by the [calling] object] and returns its lines. That's fairly simple and clear. In an article about signatures, however, I think using the term is absolutely appropriate, and warrants defining it parenthetically inline as "the object that calls/invokes the associated method". I get that using the word "call" muddies the water (the formal distinction that tchrist was getting at is that a sub has no invocant except perhaps a calling context, ie the "caller" — which a method also has), but we already did that by having methods use CALL-ME instead of INVOKE-ME :-) * MSS * Of course, the reason was to harmonize calls of all code, and the fluid nature of allowing transitive methods be used as subs and viceversa (method $invocant: @args and $invocant.&sub) means that one term had to rule them all. ________________________________ From: William Michels <w...@caa.columbia.edu<mailto:w...@caa.columbia.edu>> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2020 2:44:55 PM To: yary <not....@gmail.com<mailto:not....@gmail.com>> Cc: perl6-users <perl6-us...@perl.org<mailto:perl6-us...@perl.org>>; ToddAndMargo <toddandma...@zoho.com<mailto:toddandma...@zoho.com>>; Brad Gilbert <b2gi...@gmail.com<mailto:b2gi...@gmail.com>> Subject: Re: lines :$nl-in question Do you agree with that definition, Yary? Brad? Here it is: "Invocant" "Caller, the one who calls or invokes. The invocant of a method would be the object on which that method is being called, or, in some cases, the class itself. Invocant is used instead of caller because the latter refers to the scope." https://docs.raku.org/language/glossary#Invocant At first blush, the definition at https://docs.raku.org/language/glossary#Invocant contradicts the definition given to us by Brad. English speaker will typically use the following word pairs to denote 1. an actor and 2. a recipient of some action. So we have the following: Payer vs. Payee Lessor vs. Lessee Employer vs. Employee So going with the typical English usage above, the pattern would continue with "Caller" vs "Callee" and "Invoker" vs "Invokee/Invocant". Therefore my humble reading of the definition given by Brad, as well as a post authored by a certain TChrist on StackExchange [1], suggests to me that "Invocant" is a synonym for "Callee" (or the possibly-imaginary word "Invokee"). One can look at the definition of "Invoker" online provided by Oracle with regards to the Java programming language [2], to further distinguish "Invoker" vs "Invocant". HTH, Bill. W. Michels, Ph.D. [1] https://english.stackexchange.com/a/59070 [2] https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/index.html?javax/xml/ws/spi/Invoker.html On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 9:54 AM yary <not....@gmail.com<mailto:not....@gmail.com>> wrote: > > The Raku glossary has a definition > https://docs.raku.org/language/glossary#Invocant > > suggestion, link to that where the term appears. > > -y > > > On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 9:16 AM William Michels via perl6-users > <perl6-us...@perl.org<mailto:perl6-us...@perl.org>> wrote: >> >> Inline: >> >> On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 12:49 AM Brad Gilbert >> <b2gi...@gmail.com<mailto:b2gi...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> > >> > Invocant is in the dictionary though. >> > >> > In fact it is from Latin. >> > >> > Origin & history: >> > Derived from in- + vocō ("I call"). >> > >> > Verb: >> > I invoke >> > I call (by name) >> > >> > In fact that is pretty close to the same meaning as it is used in the Raku >> > docs. >> > >> > It is the object that we are calling (aka invoking) a method on. >> >> Maybe we can meet Todd halfway? >> >> > >> > On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 6:39 PM ToddAndMargo via perl6-users >> > <perl6-us...@perl.org<mailto:perl6-us...@perl.org>> wrote: >> >> >> >> On 2020-08-28 23:51, Tobias Boege wrote: >> >> > On Fri, 28 Aug 2020, ToddAndMargo via perl6-users wrote: >> >> >> https://docs.raku.org/type/IO::Path#method_lines >> >> >> >> >> >> (IO::Path) method lines >> >> >> >> >> >> Defined as: >> >> >> >> >> >> method lines(IO::Path:D: :$chomp = True, :$enc = 'utf8', :$nl-in = >> >> >> ["\x0A", "\r\n"], |c --> Seq:D) >> >> >> >> >> >> Opens the invocant and returns its lines. >> >> >> "Opens the invocant (i.e. the object being called) and returns its lines." >> >> [Add text in parentheses above only once per method, when the word >> 'invocant' is first used]. >> >> Comments? >> >> Best Regards, Bill.
