On 2015-07-05 21:36, Tim Chase wrote:
On 2015-07-05 20:29, Stefan Ram wrote:
But why do we not have a common and well-known term for
the counterpart, that something does not modify the state
of the world, but that the state of the world does
influence the value (behaviour) of a call such as
»datetime.datetime.now().time()«?
I believe the term is "idempotent"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotent_function#Computer_science_meaning
No, "idempotent" means that if it changes the state, then applying it twice or
more has the same effect as applying it once. For example, calling
object.__setattr__(self, attr, y) with the same arguments is idempotent; whether
you execute that once, twice or N times, afterwards, `getattr(self, attr) is y`.
But calling it the first time probably did make a change of state. This is
unlike functions like list.append(self, x) which will give you different results
depending on the number of times you call it, even if the arguments are the same.
Functions that don't change state at all are naturally idempotent, but many
idempotent functions do change state.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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