--- Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- Steffen Mueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Damian Conway wrote: > > > Larry wrote: > > > > > >> On the other hand, I could see an argument that said anyone who > > >> doesn't know what .arity means shouldn't be writing routines > that > > >> depend on it... > > > > > That was more or less my line of thought. > > > > Now, I think I'll dare claim my English is not exactly bad for a 21 > > > year-old non-native speaker. Being a physics and CS student, I do > > also have mathematical background, but it still took me a few > seconds > > to figure out "arity" *in this context*. Maybe that's because I > can't > > think of an exact German equivalent either; maybe it's because I > don't > > think a function's arity is quite the same as it's *minimum* number > of > > parameters? I mean, it makes sense in a functional language... but > > you don't have functions with a variable number of arguments there. > > (Your English sounds pretty darned good to me. :) > > > To cut this short: I think req or reqargs or somesuch would be > > better. Why choose the method names that sound more like computer > > science for the very sake of that? > > FWIW, I'm a CS professional with an appalling lack of mathematical > background (though I scored above the math average for Engineers on > my > GRE, and didn't miss any of the logic questions). I'd never *heard* > of > "arity", but tend to use esoteric language attributes rather often > (which is not a boast -- it's a rather bad habit, but there it is). > > Anyway, I like writing functions and methods that DWIM, but sometimes > WIM takes some doing. I'd rather have a name that means something to > me, too.... though to be honest, "arity" would mean something to me, > if > someone would just explain it, lol.... >
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=arity 1 entry found for arity. arity <programming> The number of arguments a function or operator takes. In some languages functions may have variable arity which sometimes means their last or only argument is actually a list of arguments. (1997-07-21) Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2001 Denis Howe =Austin
