On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Eli Barzilay <e...@barzilay.org> wrote: > A few minutes ago, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Eli Barzilay <e...@barzilay.org> wrote: >> > Just now, Jay McCarthy wrote: >> >> match-define is something else >> > >> > Indeed it is -- which makes the whole thing even more confusing. I >> > can't help imagining a newbie's reaction when they're told that >> > >> > Oh, here's your mistake -- you've used match-define where you should >> > have used define/match. >> > >> > >> > IMO, this is bad enough to withdraw it if there's no good name for it. >> >> I think both names are in keeping with the appropriate conventions -- >> `match-define` is a variant of `define` but with patterns in the >> binding positions, just like `match-let` and `match-lambda` etc. I >> don't think this is any different from `regexp-match` vs >> `regexp-match*`, for example. > > Yes, both names follow conventions, only different ones. It's the > mixture of convention that make the above newbie situation look so > ridiculously confusing.
Unfortunately, we have only one thing we can vary here -- the name. So while I'd be happy to hear better names for `define/match`, it would be wrong to call it `match-define`, and it's a valuable form and I plan to keep it. -- sam th sa...@ccs.neu.edu _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
