[Numpy-discussion] generalized_inverse

[Rick White]

On Jul 16, 2006, at 11:47 AM, Alan G Isaac wrote:

> On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, "David M. Cooke" apparently wrote:
>> 'inverse' is not much longer than 'inv', and is more descriptive
>
> But 'inv' is quite universal (can you name a matrix language
> that uses 'inverse' instead?) and I think unambiguous (what
> might it be confused with?).

IDL uses invert, so inv is not exactly universal.

I'm personally a fan of names that can be used in interactive  
sessions at the command line, which argues for shorter names.  But it  
is nice to have names where you can type just a few characters and  
use tab-completion to fill in the rest of the name. Then the  
important thing is not the full length of the name but having the  
first 3 or 4 characters be memorable. So I'd rather have  
"pseudoinverse" because I can probably find it by just typing "ps<tab>".