While I have no position on seq-contains?, I question this methodology, which I've seen a few times now. It's early days for Clojure, you're sampling a very small codebase, and there may be as yet unforseen idiomatic uses (such as you point out for testing) which invalidates this argument. In addition I think you may be begging the question somewhat. Rich's explanation is more sound than this argument.
On 29/04/2010, at 9:40 PM, Stuart Halloway wrote: > "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, > there is." -Yogi Berra (maybe). > > The recent thread on the new seq functions spun off into a theoretical > discussion about whether about the merits of having contains? and > seq-contains? as separate functions. I would like to ground that discussion > with some observations from real-world use: > > Doing an O(n) search of a seq (via includes? or, under its new name, > seq-contains?) occurs the following number of times in various libraries: > > Clojure: 0. > Contrib: 0. > Compojure: 1. (and it's wrong--should be a set test) > Incanter: 0. > > (There are a few calls to seq-contains? in the test suite for contrib, and I > wrote all of them. If you write lots of unit tests you already know why such > calls make sense there.) > > Also, AFAICT, there are *no* examples of using instance checks to select the > right containment function. So the theoretical concerns about this issue > have basically no exemplars in practice. > > "In theory, you may be right about 'contains?.' In practice, Rich Hickey is > right." - Stu Halloway. :-) Antony Blakey -------------------------- CTO, Linkuistics Pty Ltd Ph: 0438 840 787 Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. -- Denis Diderot -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
