---- On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:17:36 -0700 Stéphane Ducasse wrote ----
>>> >> >> The infinitive in English is two words with possibly other words separating >> them, the word "to" and then the verb lacking any "s" or "es" or other >> tense, number or person modifiers: "to program" or "to code." > >Thanks. I know the difference :) I meant in method selectors include: vs >includes: I think #includes*, #has* and similar messages use the third person singular so that when you use them in an expression like this: aCollection includes: anObject What you are really doing is affirming something (inclusion of an object) about some subject, (a collection). A sentence with a subject and a predicate that affirms or denies something about that subject is a proposition, and propositions in two-valued logic are either true or false (just as the smalltalk expression above would be when evaluated). > >isPreservingCDataSections >doesPreserveCDataSections The first form is already in use elsewhere in the API and has some advantages over the third person singular form (the "is" prefix). However, it can also imply an unnecessary temporal restriction to the present. For example, compare #resolvesExternalEntities with #isResolvingExternalEntities. The second selector could just mean--if true--that the parser supports resolution of external entities, but it could also mean that the parser is right now, at this very moment, resolving external entities. While the "does" form does not suffer from these ambiguities, it is also the longest and ugliest of bunch. > >Yes but it looks like an order too and I do not understand the difference >between >using > preserveSCD.... >and > parseDocument (with no S after parseDocument) Imperative forms of a verb in English never have an "s" or "es" at the end of them. That means #preservesCDataSections (or #includes: or any other similar message) could never be taken to be an imperative command given to the receiver and instead must form, with the receiver and any arguments, some type of propositional sentence that is either true or false. >I follow Beck and Smalltalk with Style (see my web page) convention. I have read Kent's Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, though not the other one. I will check it out, and I appreciate your feedback, Stéphane. _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
