[Distutils] PEP 376 comments

[Ben Finney]

Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com> writes:

> On 8 Jun, 2009, at 8:16, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Paul Moore<p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Vaguely off-topic, but is it only me that hates the abbreviation
> >> "infos"? It can only realistically be an abbreviation for the word
> >> "informations" - and there's no such word :-(

It's not only you; it's bad English, which harms communication
perceptibly.

> > Mmm, that's my frenglish, Sir  ;)  (If you see other weird stuff
> > please let me know)
> >
> > So I guess "get_egg_info" is the shortest, proper form ?
> 
> The thingy we're getting is called an "EggInfo", which would IMHO mean
> that "get_egg_infos" is technically the correct name for something
> that returns a list of them. I'd interpret the singular form as a
> function that returns one EggInfo object.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm not a native english speaker

The singular form is correct for uncountable nouns, such as substances
or concepts. Nouns like “equipment” or “information” are
uncountable, so do not get pluralised: we don't specify the *number*,
but rather the *amount* of that noun.
<URL:http://esl.about.com/od/grammarforbeginners/a/g_cucount.htm>

Now, in this case, the term is being used to name the type of a Python
object, and Python objects certainly *are* countable :-) I would want to
name the container or collection: perhaps ‘get_egg_info_list’, but
someone who knows the full purpose of that function can probably improve
that.

-- 
 \         “Broken promises don't upset me. I just think, why did they |
  `\                                         believe me?” —Jack Handey |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney