On Tue, Dec 29, 2015, at 03:39 PM, Daniel Duan wrote: > I suppose it’s appropriate to go into grammars since we are in a language > mailing list :) > > Present Participle is just an official name for “verb in present tense”, as > in “I am *writing* an email”. Let’s put the example from API Guideline to > test. I hope you agree that “someText.strippingNewlines()” as a non-mutating > method name is grammatical *somehow*. So, does it read as > > self is *stripping newlines*, here’s X. > > …or does this make more sense… > > *stripping newlines* from self gives X. > > ? > > I tend to think the latter. There’s a fancy name for it as well: gerund > phrase.
I don't read it either way. As suggested in my previous email, I'd read this as "transforms someText by *splitting newlines* (and returns the result)". It's not entirely clear how to classify this usage (since grammar is confusing), but it's kind of a moot point because Wikipedia says: > The distinction between gerund and present participles is not recognised in > modern reference grammars, since many uses are ambiguous. And it doesn't really matter anyway because the guidelines don't say that the non-mutating variant has to read as a noun phrase, it just says to name it using the appropriate -ed/-ing ending. And in the case of strippingNewlines(), this makes sense, as it's the non-mutating counterpart to stripNewlines(). But in the case of dropFirst(), this is not a non-mutating counterpart to removeFirst(). dropFirst() is defined on SequenceType, which has no removeFirst(). If anything, removeFirst() is a mutating version that's derived from dropFirst() (although not really, since removeFirst() is named after removeAtIndex() and the only naming relation it has to dropFirst() is re-using the same "First" suffix). -Kevin _______________________________________________ swift-evolution mailing list [email protected] https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
