Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "bearophile" <bearophileHUGS@lycos.com> wrote in message news:hl9ipc$26r1$1@digitalmars.com...
>> Andrei Alexandrescu:
>>> I don't mind "reversed" but it's longer than "retro" and the convention
>>> doesn't scale. For example, both active and passive forms of "split"
>>> look the same.
>> For me "retro" is acceptable. I don't love "iota" but I can accept it too. Other names of Phobos2 can be improved.
>>
> 
> I can be happy with either 'retro' or 'reverse'. My feeling on 'iota' used to be "It's not great, but I'm fine with it". But now I can't remember what the hell it does; no idea. The only things that come to mind are "Dyslexic Integer to ASCII conversion", and Futurama's "Tiny Iota? I could never be as good as him. He was a great Blurnsball player."

retro does have something going for it that iota doesn't. Everybody I talked to who saw "retro" in my article on ranges knew immediately what it does, and furthermore remembered the name later.

Andrei

"Mike James" <foo@bar.com> wrote in message news:hl9i1q$24m0$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> I can understand that, but the problem is - the dictionary definition of 'retro' is 'associated with or revived from the past'. It doesn't correctly describe the action. It could generate many hours of semiotic arguements... ;=)
>

I think there's probably a lot of cases where dictionary definitions don't quite match a word's usage in the programming world. "Kill", "thread", "string", "rake" (the ruby build tool) all come to mind. Of course, "retro" might be argued to be more of a stretch than some of those, but you can also think of "retro" just referring to the prefix "retro" (which does basically just mean "backwards", AIUI) rather than the actual word "retro".

opposite

not very long name, bears the meaning

"Igor Lesik" <curoles@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:mailman.58.1266181553.4461.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
> opposite
>
> not very long name, bears the meaning
>

"opposite" (and "inverse" as someone suggested) can have a lot of different meanings. Too ambiguous, IMO.

Justin Johansson wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>>
>>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think
>>>>> "reverse" is a much better word.
>>>> Agree.
>>>>
>>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or
>>>> design from the recent past.
>>>>
>>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning
>>>> isn't very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>>>
>>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language
>>> (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point of
>>> a name, a name should be clear).
>>
>> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please compile a list.
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> How about
> 
> esrever

Nah, hcaerof

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:18:02 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>
>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think "reverse" is a much better word.
>>> Agree.
>>>
>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or design from the recent past.
>>>
>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning isn't very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>> 
>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point of a name, a name should be clear).
> 
> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please compile a list.

It sounds like a flaw in the language design if the symbols for reversing arrays and ranges somehow conflict.

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:26:36 -0500, bearophile wrote:

> Andrei Alexandrescu:
>> I don't mind "reversed" but it's longer than "retro" and the convention doesn't scale. For example, both active and passive forms of "split" look the same.
> 
> For me "retro" is acceptable. I don't love "iota" but I can accept it too. Other names of Phobos2 can be improved.

Agreed, these names are really confusing. To me itoa sounds like "integer to string" and iota "string to integer" ("to".reverse == "ot").

I can imagine using retro in code such as:

import pacman.PacmanGame;

void main() {
  if (userWants3DVoodoo) {
    // real time 3d rendering with photon mapping and 9.1 192/24 sounds
    (new PacmanGame).start();
  } else {
    // nice 8-bit graphics with mono 4-bit sound
    retro(new PacmanGame).start();
  }
}

retard wrote:
> Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:18:02 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 
>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>>
>>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think "reverse"
>>>>> is a much better word.
>>>> Agree.
>>>>
>>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or design
>>>> from the recent past.
>>>>
>>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning isn't
>>>> very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language
>>> (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point
>>> of a name, a name should be clear).
>> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name
>> that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is
>> understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't
>> forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course
>> best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please
>> compile a list.
> 
> It sounds like a flaw in the language design if the symbols for reversing arrays and ranges somehow conflict.

There are two operations: reverse the thing in place, and span it in retrograde order.

Andrei

On 2/14/10 18:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>
>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think
>>>> "reverse" is a much better word.
>>> Agree.
>>>
>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or
>>> design from the recent past.
>>>
>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning
>>> isn't very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>>
>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language
>> (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point of
>> a name, a name should be clear).
>
> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name
> that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is
> understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't
> forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course
> best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please
> compile a list.
>
> Andrei

I never understood the reason for that the names need to be short. I think the most important thing is that the names are clear. Just look at the C standard library, it's horrible, almost every name is an abbreviation of some kind.

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> retard wrote:
>> Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:18:02 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>
>>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>>>
>>>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think "reverse"
>>>>>> is a much better word.
>>>>> Agree.
>>>>>
>>>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or design
>>>>> from the recent past.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning isn't
>>>>> very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>>>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language
>>>> (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point
>>>> of a name, a name should be clear).
>>> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name
>>> that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is
>>> understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't
>>> forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course
>>> best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please
>>> compile a list.
>>
>> It sounds like a flaw in the language design if the symbols for reversing arrays and ranges somehow conflict.
> 
> There are two operations: reverse the thing in place, and span it in retrograde order.
> 
> Andrei

asterite@deep-water:~$ irb
irb(main):001:0> a = [1, 2, 3]
=> [1, 2, 3]
irb(main):002:0> a.reverse
=> [3, 2, 1]
irb(main):003:0> a
=> [1, 2, 3]
irb(main):004:0> a.reverse!
=> [3, 2, 1]
irb(main):005:0> a
=> [3, 2, 1]
irb(main):006:0>

Aaaah... ruby <3