Re: Haskell Platform Proposal: add the 'text' library

On Friday 08 October 2010 17:16:20, Johan Tibell wrote:

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Ross Paterson wrote:

...

As far as I can see, the naming incompatibilities between the 3 packages are the following:

text        base      bytestring     type in text (or equivalent if absent) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- break       -         breakSubstring Text -> Text -> (Text, Text) breakBy     break     break          (Char -> Bool) -> Text -> (Text, Text) breakEnd    -         -              Text -> Text -> (Text, Text) -           -         breakEnd       (Char -> Bool) -> Text -> (Text, Text) count       -         -              Text -> Text -> Int -           -         count          Char -> Text -> Int find        -         -              Text -> Text -> [(Text, Text)] findBy      find      find           (Char -> Bool) -> Text -> Maybe Char partitionBy partition -              (Char -> Bool) -> Text -> (Text, Text) replicate   -         -              Int -> Text -> Text -           replicate replicate      Int -> Char -> Text spanBy      span      span           (Char -> Bool) -> Text -> (Text, Text) split       -         -              Text -> Text -> [Text] -           -         split          Char -> Text -> [Text] splitBy     -         splitWith      (Char -> Bool) -> Text -> [Text] unfoldrN    -         -              Int -> (a -> Maybe (Char, a)) -> a -> Text -           -         unfoldrN       Int -> (a -> Maybe (Char, a)) -> a -> (Text, Maybe a) zipWith     zipWith   -              (Char -> Char -> Char) -> Text -> Text -> Text -           zipWith   zipWith        (Char -> Char -> a) -> Text -> Text -> [a]

* The -By suffix has been used for predicate versions in 5 cases here,  but not for filter and findIndex. * The find function has no connection with findBy.  It ought to have a  name that is the plural of the name of the break function.

Given text's focus on subsequences rather than single elements these differences make sense to me after a quick first scan.

Sure. But at least with break and replicate there's the problem that the functions on lists are used a lot, so text's naming violates the principle of least surprise. (Not sure whether find is used a lot.) So what's worse, having the good names for substring oriented things in text and surprise unsuspecting users when "break (== '\n') text" doesn't compile or having more cumbersome names for the substring oriented functions? I think having break and replicate corresponding to the Prelude types is preferable, although within the text package the current names are darned nice.