Ronald Oussoren <[email protected]> writes: > On 8 Jun, 2009, at 8:16, Tarek Ziadé wrote: > > > On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Paul Moore<[email protected]> wrote: > >> Vaguely off-topic, but is it only me that hates the abbreviation > >> "infos"? It can only realistically be an abbreviation for the word > >> "informations" - and there's no such word :-(
It's not only you; it's bad English, which harms communication perceptibly. > > Mmm, that's my frenglish, Sir ;) (If you see other weird stuff > > please let me know) > > > > So I guess "get_egg_info" is the shortest, proper form ? > > The thingy we're getting is called an "EggInfo", which would IMHO mean > that "get_egg_infos" is technically the correct name for something > that returns a list of them. I'd interpret the singular form as a > function that returns one EggInfo object. > > Disclaimer: I'm not a native english speaker The singular form is correct for uncountable nouns, such as substances or concepts. Nouns like “equipment” or “information” are uncountable, so do not get pluralised: we don't specify the *number*, but rather the *amount* of that noun. <URL:http://esl.about.com/od/grammarforbeginners/a/g_cucount.htm> Now, in this case, the term is being used to name the type of a Python object, and Python objects certainly *are* countable :-) I would want to name the container or collection: perhaps ‘get_egg_info_list’, but someone who knows the full purpose of that function can probably improve that. -- \ “Broken promises don't upset me. I just think, why did they | `\ believe me?” —Jack Handey | _o__) | Ben Finney _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
