Jonathan T. Rockway wrote:
I agree that "got" is generally a good word to avoid in formal writing,
but in a testing protocol I think that it's an acceptable abbreviation
No! Do not accept inferior substitutes, strive for perfection.
for "the actual result". Especially since "received" doesn't quite
convey the right meaning here. Maybe "expected data" and "actual data"
Expected and actual has a long tradition in scientific endeavour, and is
what I put forward last year, the last time this subject came up.
(or "expected" and "actually") are better? Or maybe "got" is fine; HTTP
still works even though "Referer" is misspelled.
So we should use Recieved? :)
Has got/expected ever caused any confusion to anyone (including
non-speakers of English)? If so, why?
Yes me, and I am a native speaker (well, Australian... so... whatever...)
I ranted about this on -qa some time back, and Schwern said that it was
too late to do anything about it now. But this new format allows me to
roll out my rant again!
My confusion regarding "got" is that I never know whether it's what I
got initially, and then I want to see what the test brings back, or
whether I have something, and it's what I got back from the test. On a
number of occasions I have stared at a failing test, wondering why when
I run it manually or stick in printf statements I appear to be getting
the right thing. Or the wrong thing, whatever. It gets me confused.
Compounded by the fact that, as others point out elsewhere in this
thread, the order of appearance is backwards.
A primary school teacher taught me that "got" was a word of the weak,
that can nearly always be replaced by something better. This is the only
lesson that still stands out vivdly for me from that time.
Here, let me dig up that rant:
http://www.mail-archive.com/perl-qa@perl.org/msg03999.html
Thanks,
David
--
Much of the propaganda that passes for news in our own society is given
to immobilising and pacifying people and diverting them from the idea
that they can confront power. -- John Pilger
