On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, Mark S. Miller wrote:
> static public String aan(String rec) {
[...]
> What should I do with the "sometimes y"?
It's almost always a consonant at the beginning of a word. I think "a" in front of a y is pretty safe.
> If you know a better heuristic, I'd live to hear it.
Nice typo. Don't kill yourself over this issue! :) :)
> I write "an herb", "a
> heuristic", and "a UFO", but this code won't. Oops, it will say "a UFO"
> since I forgot to be case insensitive! Is this a bug or a feature?
A feature? :) Well, the "a" or "an" being returned is always lowercase, which would make it less likely that the next word is an all-caps pronounceable word...
But what if you wanted "A" or "An"?
Then again, "a unit", "a uniform", "an underling"... argh! Forget it!
*sigh*. I hate English.
> >Is this method really necessary?
>
> I probably shouldn't have put it into String, but I'm not sure where I
> should put it. I HATE the annoying messages I get from programs that don't
> get "a" vs "an" right on the simple cases.
I found it quite curious that you put this method in there. Actually, i can't remember when (if ever) i last wanted to choose between "a" and "an"... when i'm printing messages i most often worry about singular or plural (and that is practically impossible to automate).
I don't have a clear memory of such cases, but i bet a lot of the time "the" would work as well... tell me, how does this keep coming up for you?
> >Why is "/" named "approxDivide"? All operations are limited by
> >the precision of the registers anyway... does "/" do something
> >different from the "/" we know, say, in C?
>
> What's this register stuff?? We is talkin' SEMANTICS!! On IEEE double
> precision floating point numbers, "/" does indeed do what Java does, and
> what I think C does by default -- double precision IEEE round to nearest.
> Given just double precision floating
> point and unlimited precision integers, I cannot provide an accurate
> integer division operation, so what are the alternatives?
> There is no semantics in common between what Java's "/" does on integers
> and what it does on floating point numbers. My choice: "/" is shorthand
> for "approxDivide", and it means "the IEEE double precision floating point
> number closest (by round to nearest) to the quotient of the two numbers,
> whatever they are".
This is good, and i think it is reasonable and consistent to simply call this "divide" -- given that, for example, even "-" only gives you "the IEEE double-precision floating-point number closest to the difference of the two numbers" (e.g. 1e45 - 1e-45).
> >Is it necessary to introduce the extra method calls "isLTZero"
x compareTo(y) <= 0, i suppose. But the "<=" here means a
primitive "<=" in the kernel, not a method call. I mean,
it's got to bottom out somewhere. What i was trying to say
is that i don't see what the extra indirection buys you since
doubles are a built-in type anyway. Surely you don't expect
people to override the meanings of "isLTZero" and friends?
> >"isGEQZero" etc. with comparisons? Can't you just expect the
> >compareTo method to return a familiar numeric value that you
> >can test directly?
>
> Let's say that compareTo always returned -1, 0, 1, or NaN. What would you
> have "x <= y" expand to?
> >I think calling atan2, min, max as methods on a double looks
> >pretty weird... min and max in particular are probably best
> >provided with a tuple or an unlimited number of arguments,
> >aren't they?
>
> Ok, I buy it for min and max. What's your beef with atan2? How about cos?
All the one-argument functions like cos and sqrt do make sense in a reverse-Polish-esque sort of way. I'm not screaming to have the "atan2" method removed (or even the "min" or "max" methods removed for that matter)... i just hope that "x atan2(y)" is not the *only* way to call atan2, as it will look a little strange to some people. Presumably there is some sort of math package with all kinds of stuff in it, where min, max, maybe even mean, mode, median, stdev -- whatever -- would go...
Funny, now that i think of it, i suppose if you wanted to say
x := 1e99
while (...)
{
y := ...
x := x min(y)
}
to accumulate a minimum, i suppose in that case "x min= y" would mean something. But i don't know if it's worth extending the (operator)= syntax to (method)= just for that.
> >What's the point of the "yourself" method? (If anything, i
> >would prefer that it be called "self"... i'd like not to personify
> >my objects if i can help it.)
>
> I love to personify them, especially Alice, Bob, and Carol! "yourself" is
> used in the implementation of partial-ordering in the network protocol, and
> isn't expected to be otherwise useful.
Okay. Just curious what it was for.
> I won't call it "self"
> because that is the conventional instance variable name by which an object
> refers to itself. Even though message names and variable names are in two
> separate namespaces (verbs vs nouns) I like to avoid using the same name
> for two different meanings.
I agree -- this is a sound principle.
> >Why would one ever want fileUrl: instead of file:? Is the syntax
> >and behaviour of URIs in the language documented somewhere yet?
>
> "fileUrl:x" would evaluate to a java.net.URL object
> http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/api/java/net/URL.html whereas
> "file:x" would evaluate to a java.io.File object
> http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/api/java/io/File.html
> within the curlies, "return" is bound to an Ejector. What do you think
> about renaming Ejector "EscapeHatch"?
I like that name. Both names are okay with me, actually, though i suppose it's easier to guess what "EscapeHatch" is related to since it contains the word "escape".
> Programmers already have to remember too many
> exceptions to what should have been simple rules. Let's stick with a
> simple rule for midCaps.
Okay. Consistency is good. I am sorry that my weird sense of aesthetics has me in the habit of avoiding midCaps -- i will just have to learn to correct that sense of aesthetics when working with E.
> >Is there an easy "x in set" test? cf. Python
> >
> > if platform in ['windows', 'winnt', 'win95']:
> > print "Warning: your computer will probably crash today."
>
> if (["windows", "winnt", "win95"] asSet containsKey(platform)) {
> >Also, Python permits chaining comparison operators so you
> >can do a quick-n-easy range test:
> >
> > if 3 < x < y <= 8:
> > ...
>
> I do like this. How do they do it? What's the BNF?
The productions are:
comparison: or_expr (comp_operator or_expr)* comp_operator: "<"|">"|"=="|">="|"<="|"<>"|"!="|"is" ["not"]|["not"] "in"
The documentation says:
Comparisons yield integer values: 1 for true, 0 for false.
Comparisons can be chained arbitrarily, e.g., x < y <= z is equivalent to x < y and y <= z, except that y is evaluated only once (but in both cases z is not evaluated at all when x < y is found to be false).
Formally, if a, b, c, ..., y, z are expressions and opa, opb, ..., opy are comparison operators, then a opa b opb c ...y opy z is equivalent to a opa b and b opb c and ... y opy z, except that each expression is evaluated at most once.
Note that a opa b opb c doesn't imply any kind of comparison between a and c, so that, e.g., x < y > z is perfectly legal (though perhaps not pretty).
I was going to suggest in an earlier message that you consider the possibility of "and", "or", "not" operators, because they really are much easier on the eyes than "&&", "||", "!()" ... but i was afraid you would be too reluctant to rename the "and" and "or" methods for implementing & and |. (Well, actually, there isn't a collision here because the identifier following "to" is not an expression, so you could allow both "x < 0 and y < 0" and "...to and(y):...", but i thought you wouldn't like that context-sensitivity either. If it were me i would seriously consider doing it that way...) Anyway, did i guess right?
> I will continue to support containsKey, as Java folk expect it. For
> reasons stated earlier, I hate "haskey", and "hasKey" isn't a big enough
> improvement to introduce it *in addition to* containsKey. However, if a
> good short single word can be found....?
> Thanks for wonderful questions & suggestions!
Thanks for tolerating all the demands and diversions!
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