PEP 322 - alternate method names

[Alex Martelli]

Robert Brewer <fumanchu at amor.org> wrote:

> AC wrote:
> > >From the PEP 322 page:
> > 
> > "This PEP has been conditionally accepted for Py2.4. The condition
> > means that if the function is found to be useless, it can be removed
> > before Py2.4b1"
> > 
> > Is there still hope at least for an alternative method name that is
> > not past tense?
> 
> "reversed" doesn't have to be a past tense verb in English; it's more of
> an adjective, modifying its target. "X is a reversed sequence".
> 
> > flip, transpose, invert, swap... 
> 
> The problem with using a "present tense verb" is that it implies that
> the original object is mutated.

So what about a GERUND, 'reversing' or the like, as somebody else just
mentioned?  THAT would be cool, IMHO (not that I think any name change
stands much of a chance at the stage...).  The convention of using
gerunds for iterators and generators seems good in general; I wish we
had 'enumerating' rather than 'enumerate' and, say, itertools.zipping
rather than itertools.izip.  Ah well, sigh, probably too late by now --
ah well indeed!


Alex