[Haskell-cafe] Naming scheme for partial functions

[Michael Snoyman]

It means "throws an *ex*ception."


On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 5:04 AM, Antoine Latter <aslatter at gmail.com> wrote:

> What does "Ex" mean?
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:59 PM, Michael Snoyman <michael at snoyman.com>wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the input. We ended up going with an `Ex` suffix, e.g. headEx,
>> lastEx.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 4:53 AM, Tikhon Jelvis <tikhon at jelv.is> wrote:
>>
>>> For what it's worth, OCaml's Core library does this with _exn, so they
>>> would call a partial last "last_exn". I would actually prefer an
>>> abbreviation of some sort (like exn) as long as it's a consistent
>>> convention. Using a full word like "exception" or "partial" adds to much
>>> noise in my opinion, especially if the base name (like "last") is shorter
>>> than the suffix!
>>>
>>> Also, I think a suffix would be better than a prefix, if only to group
>>> things conveniently when sorted alphabetically.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Atze van der Ploeg <atzeus at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> unprovenLast ?
>>>> On Jan 30, 2014 6:33 PM, "Michael Snoyman" <michael at snoyman.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Greg Weber and I have been discussing some changes to
>>>>> mono-traversable[1]. One of the modules we provide is Data.NonNull, which
>>>>> provides total versions of functions like `last`. A change we're looking at
>>>>> would require having a partial version of `last` defined in a separate
>>>>> typeclass (IsSequence), which would allowing for more optimized
>>>>> implementations of the total `last` function for datatypes which support it
>>>>> (e.g., strict ByteStrings).
>>>>>
>>>>> But what should we name it? I'm sure everyone's familiar with the
>>>>> `unsafe` naming convention, but that's not appropriate here: standard usage
>>>>> shows `unsafe` meaning a function which can cause a segfault.
>>>>>
>>>>> I initially named it `partialLast`, but partial can also imply partial
>>>>> function application. Greg brought up the idea of suffixing the function
>>>>> with something like `Throws` or `Errors`, which I think I'm a bit partial
>>>>> to myself[2].
>>>>>
>>>>> So my questions are:
>>>>>
>>>>> * Is there some already used naming scheme out there for partial
>>>>> functions which I've missed?
>>>>> * Do people have any ideas to throw into the mix?
>>>>>
>>>>> Michael
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] https://github.com/snoyberg/mono-traversable/pull/21
>>>>> [2] Pardon the pun.
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
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