[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Naming in arrayobject.c

[P. Dubois]

SIG'ers,
Here are some thoughts about the names in arrayobject.c; I am now leaving 
town until the 20th so that I don't have to listen to the resulting howls
of outrage (:->. My philosophy is close to that used in the ISE Eiffel
libraries and as described in the book Reusable Software by Meyer.

1. These are ok as is:
transpose     (ok, imperative verb for something that modifies self)
cast          (ok, ditto)
typecode      (ok, noun = attribute)
itemsize      (ok, noun = attribute)
toString
toFile
choose  	(this is so weird a function anyway ...)


2. These I think need changing:

Current -> Proposed      Reason
------------------------------------
byteswap -> byteswapped  (returns result, shouldn't be an imperative verb)
reshape -> shaped        (returns result, shouldn't be an imperative verb)
	If worried about typos because shape and shaped too similar, 
	consider shaped_as. But not reshape, which definitely sounds like
	self is being modified.
isnonzero -> nonzero_indices (sounds too much like test of not all zeros)
        This returns a list of indices where x is not zero.
       (Note: maybe a new function x.is_zero() would be useful to mean 
	true => all elements are 0)
copy -> clone         
	copy is an ambiguous word as to whether one is the copier or the
	copyee. But clone definitely carries more of a feeling that this
        is going to produce a copy.
        In Eiffel, x.copy(y) means set x's attributes from y, for example.

concat -> append       (philosophically equivalent to list.append)
	If you don't like append, then change it to concatenate; 
	abbreviations are not worth the trouble they cause.
contiguous  -> is_contiguous  
	This is a query, not a command to make self contiguous

3. These are not clear to me

take     -> gather
        m.take(i_list) returns [m[i_list[0]], m[i_list[1]], ...]
        Gather is a more traditional name but I won't argue this too hard.

conjugate -> conjugated   
	Ambiguous as to whether it modifies self.
	But, you could make the case "conjugate" is a noun, not a verb
	in which case it is ok.


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