Next in Review Queue: The New std.path

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.1680.1310785695.14074.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>
> joinPath:
> I'm not sure that this function should be renamed to joinPath. When 
> discussing
> other modules such as as std.ascii and std.uni, we decided that they 
> should
> have the same function names and _not_ put the module name in their names.
> Now, this function _is_ joining paths, so it's not purely a case of having
> the module's name in the function name, but I'm still not sure that we 
> want to
> have it as joinPath instead of join.
>

I really, really, REALLY, *REALLY* think it's a big mistake to categorically 
ban using the module name in the function names. And its *especially* bad in 
this case. Having both std.algorithm.join and std.path.join with their 
different semantics is just begging for problems. "join" is a terrible, 
terrible, awful, horrible name for this function.

I don't care if using conflicting names between std.ascii and std.uni was 
deemed OK. Every case needs to be judged on its own or else we're knee-deep 
in bondage & discipline design and we may as well call ourselves "Sun 
Microsystems" and our language "Java".

And yes, the precedent set by std.ascii and std.uni is a factor in the 
decision, but I think the rest of the situation here easily overrides that 
concern. Hell, when people see "join" they think of the semantics of 
std.algortihm.join, *never* "Oh, 'join' means using path separators." And 
looking at the names of the arguments, or other context clues, isn't a valid 
counter-argument because when I see "join(path1, path2, filename)" I'm going 
to immediately think "bug, or at least overly fragile". And why not? From 
the name "join", I have no way to tell.

I don't give a crap about "Ext" vs "Extension" (they both get the job done), 
and I think that horse has already been beaten to death last time std.path 
was discussed. But calling joinPath "join", is bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD.