I made the same observation on Haskell in the original post :) “removeFirst()” is also defined in CollectionType. So “dropFirst()” is removeFirst()’s – in the Guidelines’ term – "non-mutating counterpart" for all CollectionTypes. Therefore, “removingFirst()” would be the winner.
(My personal preference notwithstanding, that is). > On Dec 29, 2015, at 12:15 PM, Kevin Ballard <ke...@sb.org> wrote: > > I guess that's a good argument for keeping "prefix" and "suffix" instead of > "take" and "takeEnd". But there is no good noun phrase to use for > dropFirst/dropLast (Haskell's "init" and "tail" are nouns but they're very > confusing and don't really make sense once you add in an integral argument > anyway). The guidelines do say it's acceptable to use an imperative verb if > there is no good noun phrase, so "skip" and "skipEnd" (or "skipLast", or > maybe "skipSuffix" if we're keeping "suffix") are still reasonable. > > Incidentally, it occurs to me that "removingFirst" is actually not an > appropriate name here, because dropFirst is a method of SequenceType, and > SequenceType does not have mutating methods. removeFirst is actually defined > by RangeReplaceableCollectionType (and by Set, and also by CollectionType if > SubSequence == Self). > > -Kevin Ballard > > On Tue, Dec 29, 2015, at 11:55 AM, Daniel Duan wrote: >> Hi Kevin, >> >> “take" and “skip” are fine as free function names. As method names, they are >> a step back from following the API Guidelines (“non-mutating methods should >> read as noun phrases”). >> >> - Daniel >> >>> On Dec 29, 2015, at 11:40 AM, Kevin Ballard via swift-evolution >>> <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, Dec 28, 2015, at 04:23 PM, Kevin Ballard wrote: >>>> That said, `droppingFirst` sounds pretty weird to me. "drop" (and the >>>> related verb "take" that we're not using) has precedent in multiple >>>> languages (Rust and Haskell come to mind) to mean "return a new sequence >>>> that skips the first N elements". And I'm not aware of any language that >>>> sets precedent for the verb "drop" to mean "mutate the receiver". >>> >>> Hmm, I just took a look, and while Rust does use "take", it actually >>> doesn't use "drop" (but Haskell does). Instead it uses "skip", which seems >>> like a good candidate if we're going to rename this. I'm tempted to say we >>> should use "take" instead of "prefix" as well, because `seq.prefix(3)` >>> isn't actually immediately obvious what it does (as the verb "prefix" >>> usually means to add onto the front, not to take the front). And we can use >>> "takeLast" for "suffix" (neither Rust nor Haskell appears to have an >>> equivalent of takeLast; I believe Rust doesn't because none of its iterator >>> adaptors use dynamically-allocated memory, and I think Haskell expects you >>> to just do `reverse . take n . reverse`). Although I do notice Haskell has >>> a function dropWhileEnd that drops the suffix, which suggests "takeEnd" and >>> "dropEnd" here. >>> >>> Which is to say, if we're going to rename these methods, my vote is: >>> >>> prefix -> take >>> suffix -> takeEnd or takeLast >>> dropFirst -> skip >>> dropLast -> skipEnd or skipLast >>> >>> -Kevin Ballard >>> _______________________________________________ >>> swift-evolution mailing list >>> swift-evolution@swift.org >>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution >> _______________________________________________ swift-evolution mailing list swift-evolution@swift.org https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
