<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Do not eat a lot of Chinese Gooseberries (the fruit whose name was changed by</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">the company Turners and Growers for marketing reasons, back before Ping-Pong</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Diplomacy) unless you want to lose weight by running frequently to the small</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">room. Actinidia deliciosa wants its fruit eaten but not fully digested, for</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">the sake of the seeds.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">(<a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-chinese-gooseberry-becomes-the-kiwifruit">https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-chinese-gooseberry-becomes-the-kiwifruit</a></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">explains the name change. I still use the old name.)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">To be honest, the first time I saw the function name 'tokens', I expected</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">something returning *Erlang* tokens, then when I saw 'lexemes', I said to</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">myself "NOW they have a function that does what I thought tokens did".</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Wrong again.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Here's an apropos example from the ANSI Smalltalk standard.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">aString subStrings: separators</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">The first thing to note is that this actually violates Smalltalk naming</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">conventions: internal capitals are only to be used at *word* boundaries,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">not *morpheme* boundaries. And 'sub-' as used here is a prefix, not a</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">word. Some Smalltalk implementations have changed it to 'substrings'.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">One has renamed it to</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">aString asCollectionOfSubstringsSeparatedByAnyOf: separators</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">The second thing to note is that the description given for it is</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">hopelessly vague. If anyone thinks that the Erlang library documentation</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">needs improving -- as I do -- at least it isn't an actual *standard*!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">This operation does pretty much the same thing as string:tokens/2, but</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">you would never guess it from the text in the standard. Oh, did I</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">mention that the Erlang documentation is free but the ANSI Smalltalk</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">standard is not? The Erlang documentation is definitely value for money.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">One of these days I must really ask to be allowed to edit some of the</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Erlang documentation, but I'm afraid that if I do people will discover</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace">that I'm better at criticising than writing.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 22:36, <<a href="mailto:empro2@web.de">empro2@web.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On Wed, 8 May 2019 00:27:41 -0400<br>
"Lloyd R. Prentice" <<a href="mailto:lloyd@writersglen.com" target="_blank">lloyd@writersglen.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> Richard, you’re a star in the Erlang firmament.<br>
<br>
Not at all limited to Erlang, not even to all the<br>
languages he has ever mentioned; so it is at least the<br>
programming languages firmament ... oh, and the unicode<br>
firmament, it appears ...<br>
<br>
I sometimes wonder whether I should eat more kiwis, sorry!<br>
kiwi fruit, of course ... then again ... ;-) <br>
<br>
~Michael<br>
<br>
-- <br>
<br>
If a *bank* in need of money is systematically important,<br>
then that system is not important.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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<br>
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</blockquote></div>