On 31 August 2014 20:44, Gavin Flower <gavinflo...@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote: > On 01/09/14 06:00, Tom Lane wrote: >> >> Simon Riggs <si...@2ndquadrant.com> writes: >>> >>> Suggest discretize() as a much more informative name. The other names >>> will be overlooked by anybody that doesn't already know what to look >>> for. >> >> I did not like that idea to begin with, but it's growing more attractive. >> In particular, I think it would be unique enough that we could safely >> mark the polymorphic function as variadic (a move that would cause >> ambiguity issues for pretty nearly any user-defined function of the >> same name). >> >> OTOH, I'm not as convinced as you that this name would mean anything >> to "anybody that doesn't already know what to look for". It still >> seems like rather arcane terminology. >> >> > If I was new to PostgreSQL, I'd probably read this as disc*(), a function to > do something with discs. > > I have done finite maths and statistics at university, plus I have been > vaguely following this thread - but, the meaning of discretize() is not > immediately apparent to me (if I reread a previous email or 2 in this > thread, then I'm sure it would then be obvious!). I might guess that it is > to make something discrete, but why would I want to do that? So if I came > across this function in a year or 2, I'd probably go right past it. > > I have been programming for over 40 years, and I still find choosing > appropriate names sometimes very difficult, so I know it is not easy to come > up with meaningful names - especially ones that mean something relevant to > other people!
It's important that we *don't* come up with a new name. This function does something useful and the words people already use to describe that are binning and discretization. By this I mean names already used by very widely used software. Search them and see, or suggest more widely used alternatives, please. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers