After thinking another few moments about it, I think the confusion might be
lifted slightly with some clever use of dispatch. Consider if we'd do
something like this:
max(itr) # returns the largest element in the collection
max(a,b,c...) = max([a,b,c...])
max{N}(A,dims::NTuple{N}) # compute maximum element along dimensions
max(A,dim::Integer) = max(A, (dim,))
max(a::Number, b::Integer) = max([a,b]) # there's probably a more efficient
way to do this, to avoid the array allocation
Since the last one is more specific than the second to last, there is no
longer a conflict between max(A,2) to calculate the maximum of each row of
a matrix, and max(a,2) to get the largest value out of a and the integer 2.
There might of course be use cases I've forgotten about, but to me this
seems to cover most of the use cases and still avoid having to remember two
different function names. (I tried to take a look at methods(max) to see if
I could find a reason for this not already being the way things were, but I
ran into trouble... <https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/6755>)
// T
On Monday, May 5, 2014 3:55:42 PM UTC+2, Stefan Karpinski wrote:
>
> Honestly, I've always been dissatisfied with this solution and would have
> preferred the keyword-argument solution that I proposed back when we were
> discussing this. Having lived with the maximum thing for a while and seen
> others encounter it, I'm no less dissatisfied. I still type max when I need
> maximum almost every time.
>
> > On May 5, 2014, at 9:36 AM, Billou Bielour
> > <[email protected]<javascript:>>
> wrote:
> >
> > I'm not saying that the help is not clear, or that the behavior is
> surprising, but only that there no information in the words "max" and
> "maximum" that allows you to guess or remember their behaviors. I mean one
> is just the abbreviation of the other.
> > For example if I tell you I have two functions, "ceil" and "ceiling",
> can you guess what is the difference between the two ?
>
