[REBOL] Re: On ordinal and cardinal numbers...
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 6-Jul-2001 23:50
Hi, Ladislav, and all,
Ladislav Mecir wrote:
> is there a chance that Carl gets something more people can
> agree upon? My idea is to have something like these:
>
I'll gladly defer on the detailed specifications to your well-
developed (and -demonstrated) patience and attention to detail!
At the risk of inconsistency with my own stated views on the
unsuitability of English as a specification language... ;-)
I think that having 0-based analogs of the following words
would be *quite* sufficient: INDEX? SKIP AT PICK POKE
Can anyone think of any others that would be critical to
performance in manipulating series values?
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Carl Sassenrath <[carl--rebol--com]>
>
...
> >
> > Be sure to provide a good name, since that takes more time
> > than coding.
> >
I'll be quite happy to email these directly to Carl, but would
like feedback from the community first. This issue isn't my
private property!
The best two alternatives I can think of would be:
1) Ryan's suggestion of a /zero refinement to the existing
words:
index?/zero skip/zero at/zero pick/zero poke/zero
PRO: Less global namespace inflation.
Learning time of (I have to say it ;-) zero.
Mnemonic value.
CONS: Possible complexity of adding a refinement to
words already "richly endowed" with refinements
(but this is purely a judgement call for RT).
Trival bit of extra typing (hardly worth notice,
but I thought I'd get it out of the way).
2) Parallel words with distinguishing suffix; my minimalist
vote would be for:
index0? skip0 at0 pick0 poke0
PRO: Mnemonic value.
Learning time of essentially (again ;-) zero.
Slightly less typing than above option.
CON: Adds global words (how big an issue is this?).
Digit #"0" and uppercase #"O" look very similar
in some typefaces, leading to the possibility of
hard-to-detect typos. This could be addressed by
using a #"z" suffix instead; that's just a bit
stranger-looking to my eyes, but I'm certainly
willing to defer to the collective wisdom of the
community on this issue. Thus changed, we have
indexz? skipz atz pickz pokez
IMHO an advantage for either of these naming conventions (vs.
e.g., packaging them all in a separate object or using a
common prefix) is that the 1-based and 0-based versions would
therefore appear together (or very nearby) in alphabetically-
sorted lists of words, thus following the "library shelf"
principle that similar things should be grouped together to
make it easier to find them.
print [
random/only [
"feedback" "suggestions" "alternatives" "no flames"
] "welcome! ;-)"
]
-jn-
---------------------------------------------------------------
There are two types of science: physics and stamp collecting!
-- Sir Arthur Eddington
joel-dot-neely-at-fedex-dot-com
