On 2010-02-21 02:15:23 -0500, Norbert Nemec <[email protected]> said:
I would suggest the solution in Python/NumPy:
"sort" gives the command to sort data in-place
"sorted" returns a sorted data, preserving the input
similarly, I would suggest
"reverse" to sort in-place
"reversed" to return a modified copy
I that's a not so bad solution, applicable to almost any word. There
are cases where it doesn't work ('split'), but probably not too much.
The remaining problem with this is that it can easily be confused with
a boolean property. Does "array.sorted" return true or false depending
on whether the array is sorted, or does it return a sorted array?
Perhaps this is where a property would be useful:
array.sort() // sort in place
array.sorted() // create sorted copy
array.sorted // tell if the array is sorted
but it doesn't scale when you need an argument. So I suggest that
functions for evaluating a boolean characteristic start with the "is"
prefix:
array.sort(predicate) // sort in place using predicate
array.sorted(predicate) // create sorted copy using predicate
array.isSorted(predicate) // tell if the array is sorted using predicate
I updated the D Programming Guidelines I wrote a while ago on Wiki4D to
match this.
<http://www.wikiservice.at/d/wiki.cgi?DProgrammingGuidelines>
The name "iota" seems confusing to me as well. Very few greek letters
do indeed have a conventional meaning (e.g. lambda-calculus, delta for
a difference or epsilon for a really small value). Calling a function
by a meaningless name is not a good idea. Don't have a better idea
right now, though...
Perhaps "interval"? After all, iota(1, 10) is the same concept as 1..10
which denotes an interval. Ideally we could reuse the ".." operator to
create an interval, but it seems we can't. The next good solution is to
use the same terminology.
--
Michel Fortin
[email protected]
http://michelf.com/
