Naming things in Phobos - std.algorithm and writefln

[Sergey Gromov]

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:29:11 +1000, Daniel Keep wrote:

> Michel Fortin wrote:
>> In std.algorithm, wouldn't it be clearer if "splitter" was called
>> "splitLazily" or "splitLazy"? "splitter" is a noun, but as a function
>> shouldn't it be a verb. "makeSplitter" or "toSplitter" perhaps?
> 
> This is a specious argument.
> 
> splitter's only purpose is to return an instance of a Splitter struct.
> You can't call it "splitLazily" or "splitLazy" because that implies that
> the function is doing work, when it really isn't.

That's if you know how it works.

But if you just use these functions, it's not even remotely obvious what
the difference is, and the difference in naming is so subtle that many
people will be doomed to forever confuse these functions, myself
included.  I confuse getopt and getopts shell functions in the same way.
I simply can't remember which is which.