Stupid little iota of an idea

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Don" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message 
news:ijmndc$3e5$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>
>> I like "interval", too.
>>
>> I do think the name "iota" is a nice extra reason to just use a..b or 
>> a..b:c like you say. It also makes it clear that it's a series of 
>> discrete values rather than a true mathematical range, since that's 
>> exactly how foreach already uses a..b: as a series of discrete values.
>
> I don't like interval at all, because I don't think it includes the notion 
> of 'stepping'. An interval is just, everything from A to B, without 
> necessarily specifying how you reach everything in that interval. Whereas 
> iota includes the stepping.
> (I would like to see intervals in the language, but just as an [a,b] 
> pair).
>
> OTOH iota() is unintuitive to me, and I do keep reading it as itoa().
> Sadly I don't have any better suggestions.

I do agree that 'interval' is inaccurate because it doesn't imply stepping, 
but I still find 'iota' to be more inaccurate, it just means "a small 
amount", it carries no notion of range or endpoints or anything like that.