preparing for named arguments

[Exil]

On Tuesday, 27 August 2019 at 15:30:29 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 9:10:12 AM MDT Kagamin via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Monday, 26 August 2019 at 23:46:51 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
>> wrote:
>> > This is exactly one of the reasons why I think that named 
>> > arguments are a terrible idea. Now, we get to bikeshed about 
>> > what the "official" name is that we should be naming all of 
>> > these range parameters in order to be consistent and how we 
>> > should deal with naming them when there are multiple range 
>> > arguments. None of this mattered previously. As long as the 
>> > name was reasonable, it was irrelevant, and even then, it 
>> > really only mattered for documentation purposes and for 
>> > making the function internals reasonable to maintain.
>>
>> Well, they are in the docs? So inconsistency is already 
>> exposed. But if current naming is reasonable, then renaming is 
>> not needed.
>
> The documentation doesn't need to have consistent names for 
> parameters. As far as docs go, the names are really only needed 
> so that you can easily connect the description of each 
> parameter with the correct parameter, and if the names are 
> reasonable, then it's fine. Whether a range parameter is named 
> is r, range, source, haystack, or whatever really doesn't 
> matter for documentation. However, if people start actually 
> typing the names of any of the parameters in their own code 
> because of named arguments, then suddenly, it becomes a problem 
> if the names are inconsistent. There's pretty much no way that 
> folks are going to be able to remember which functions use r 
> and which use range - or use a different name entirely. Right 
> now, that don't need to remember or care, but if we had named 
> arguments, that would change.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

Parameter names should be more than single letters, for the same 
reasons they shouldn't be single letters as variables and 
function names. If you are looking at two overloads, and they 
both just name their parameters after letters. It takes more time 
to go and read the documentation, rather than being able to 
differentiate the two based on their parameter names.

I remember looking at some of the many bindings to C libraries, 
either Posix, Windows, or Stdlib for C. Someone, out of the 
goodness of their heart decided it was a good idea to name the 
parameters "a", "b", "c". Thankfully D does not provide 
documentation for bindings to C functions either. Triple whammy. 
Instead of just getting the information as I was typing the 
function (with auto complete) for the parameters names. I had to 
go to the definition to see the documentation and spend extra 
time reading it. Just to find out there was no documentation for 
it. Then having to go and search the actual documentation for it 
externally. I guess it just speaks to immaturity of the standard 
library for phobos, where there are many instances of parameters 
just being single characters (including for bindings with no 
documentation) and (no less) there are people arguing for it that 
it is fine.