I agree with Benâs reaction below , however the point that ? ! could be repurposed for something if they werenât special characters is a good one. Maybe there are other usages we are missing, and thatâs the point I guess. Tim Sent from my iPhone
On 13 Sep 2019, at 17:41, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 at 15:10, ducasse <stepharo@netcourrier.com> wrote:
On 11 Sep 2019, at 04:07, James Foster <Smalltalk@JGFoster.net> wrote:
Would use of ? and ! in unary/keyword selectors be convention or somehow required? If simply convention, then we should start with renaming testing methods to be named is* or has*. flag1 := anInteger even. ânot good"
Agreed. That could "almost" be construed as converting a 3 to a 2 or 4.
flag2 := anInteger isEven. âbetter"
Agreed. It reads well.
flag3 := anInteger even?. âhow much better?â
For me, this doesn't read as well as flag2, but even though there is some redundancy, for me a combination reads well... flag3a := anInteger isEven? Perhaps if "?"==>Boolean was a strong convention then there could be a check when the value is returned rather than when it is used (or would that complicate other things?)
flag4 := #(1 2 3) includes?: 2. âhow much better?â
My first impression is "yuck!", but then I think... "maybe" if there was a definite benefit (i.e. optimization) from strong guarantees about the return value being Boolean.
I think that I would use ? mainly for unary message
Now Iâm sure that if you look carefully some people use
include for the action includes for the tests
I took include as an example and this is super not intention revealing.
lineUpBlockBrackets
lineUpBlockBrackets? Now I will rewrite them all as shouldLineUpBlockBrackets or isLineUpBlockBrackets and to me for unary message ? makes it a lot better.
btw, some alternatives... doBlockBracketsLineUp - reads well but "do" is already a loaded word areBlockBracketsLinedUp - reads well with the past-tense phrasing
cheers -ben