Stupid little iota of an idea

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 12.02.2011 02:25, schrieb bearophile:
> Michel Fortin:
> 
>> No one noticed yet that the a..b:c syntax causes ambiguity? Tell me, 
>> how do you rewrite this using the new proposed syntax:
>>
>> 	auto aa = [iota(a, b, c): 1, iota(d, e): 2];
> 
> Right, that's why in another post I have said that syntax replaces most iota usages. There are some situations where you can't use it well. This is another situation I've shown in the enhancement request:
> iota(10.,20.)
> Writing it like this is not sane:
>  10...20.
> 
> 
>> Interval is clear only as long as there's no step value mentioned. 
>> Having a step value is quite a stretch from the usual notion of an 
>> interval.
> 
> Right, but I think it's acceptable still, and better than iota.
> 
> 
>> I like a lot so's suggestion "walk". I'm not sure it's much clearer 
>> than iota though.
> 
> It's better than iota, but not by much.
> 
> Bye,
> bearophile

I think it's much better. Even having "steps" (or a stepsize) is obvious with walk.

iota only makes sense when you know this from other languages/libraries or if
your native spoken language has a similar word that can be somehow connected.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iota doesn't give a real connection (and two
English->German dictionaries I've checked don't either - one only listed iota as
the greek letter, the other had mentions about something tiny) - it's just
something small like that greek i-without-a-dot letter.
There's nothing that connects it to a range of values with a fixed step size.

Cheers,
- Daniel