From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2007-01-04T08:29:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Little Things

On 1/4/07, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:
> Hi --
>
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Martin DeMello wrote:
>
> > On 1/4/07, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> You can generally tell from the semantics of the method name.  For
> >> example, Array#pop has no possible non-destructive meaning.  (A
> >> non-destructive pop would just be array[-1] with an incomprehensible
> >> name.)  There are a couple of cases where you do have to learn it...
> >
> > Array#peek, perhaps, or Array#top. I'm actually strongly in favour of
> > this (I even submitted an RCR some years ago), since I feel the stack
> > and queue methods should be capable of being used, as a group, without
> > having to remember which end is the stack top and which the queue
> > front.
>
> See my reply to James; I didn't mean that there's no good way to refer
> to a given item, just that pop/pop! doesn't make sense.

Ah - yes, I see what you mean. #pop does have the destructiveness
built into the name, I agree.

martin