Fwd: Two Proposals

[Philip Wadler]

George,  Thanks very much for this.  I like your suggestion, which
fits the logical structure perfectly; and you've suggested a neat way
around the ugliness of 'group groupBy'.  I also note that if we aren't
so worried about not introducing new keywords, that 'then group' could
become 'group'.  Yours,  -- P

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 11:21 PM, George Giorgidze <giorgidze at gmail.com> wrote:
> A quick thought that came to me after hoogling [a] -> [[a]].
> The first four functions in the search result are named after what they
> return (noun in plural) rather than what they do (verb). I am talking about
> inits, permutations, subsequence and tails.
> So I thought the following syntax might work as well if (as it is already
> common) grouping functions are named after  what they return.
> then       f
> then       f by e
> then group f
> then group f by e
> For example the following code fragments read well:
> then group inits
> then group permutations
> then group subsequences
> then group tails
> Here we use the special identifier group as a verb.
> I have not told you about the fifth result of the hoogling, the groupWith
> function. The following really looks ugly:
> then group groupWith by e
> But following the aforementioned naming convention the groupWith function
> could as well be named as equals. Now this reads well:
> then group equals by e
> Cheers, George

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