[erlang-questions] [eeps] EEP 9

[Fredrik Svahn]

I agree that the proposal below would make for more readable code
(although the difference between split(Buffer, "\n ") and
split(Buffer, [<<"\n">>,<<" ">>]) is not really all that big). A
potential problem is that it could lead to confusion and strange
errors if you intended to write <<"and">> but instead by mistake wrote
"and".

With the proposal below the following two functions will be very
similar but will return very different results:

split(<<"cat and dog">>, "and") -> [<<"c">>,<<"t ">>,<<" ">>,<<"og">>]
split(<<"cat and dog">>, <<"and">>) -> [<<"cat ">>, <<" dog">>]

Confusing the two would be easy if you are not sitting with the ref
manual open all the time.

Seems like we need both a function similar to string:tokens/2 (which
could take a list of one char separators, like "and" above) and a
split_with function which takes a binary or a list of binaries. Maybe
the examples above aren't all that great, but consider for instance
the difference between "\r\n" and <<"\r\n">> when splitting headers
according to RFC822.

Which other functions where you thinking about?

BR /Fredrik

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Vlad Balin <gaperton@REDACTED> wrote:
> One more issue. Take this function as an example.
>
>  split(Binary, SplitKeys) -> List
>             Binary = binary()
>             SplitKeys = binary() | [binary()]
>
>
>  Wouldn't it be useful to allow integers in SplitKeys in place of
>  binaries? We can treat them as 1-byte binaries (should be easy to
>  implement), and it will make code more readable in cases when keys
>  consist of 1 character.
>
>  With this option, we can just write
>
>  split( Buffer, "\n " )
>
>  instead of
>
>  > binary:match(<<"hello, world\n">>,[<<"\n">>,<<" ">>]).
>
>  It can be applied to many functions in this module, and it should
>  increase code readability in general.
>
>  Thanks,
>  Vlad.
>