principle of least surprise

[Robert Virding]

Kostis is right but he doesn't give the whole story. In the beginning 
there was the void and when we filled the void with Erlang we thought 
that guards should only be extensions to the basic pattern matching with 
things like simple type tests etc. Logical expressions were not 
envisioned. There we there were no problems with overlapping names and 
we could use float/1 as a type test in guards and as a conversion 
function in the body.

This broke with boolean type test functions. Instead of just having a 
few is_X/1 we thought it better to have the full range and then 
encourage people to use them in guards instead of the old X/1 versions.

I don't really see why people still use the old X/1 type tests, it's not 
like we added the new ones yesterday. Especially not savvy users.

Robert


Kostis Sagonas wrote:

> > > Nor do I really see the point of two collections of
> > > nearly-identical type test primitives (is_X/1 vs X/1).
> >
> > the question is better stated as why adding is_X/1 when there already 
> > exists X/1?
>
>One of the reasons is the following:
>
>Eshell V5.5  (abort with ^G)
>1> float(3.1).
>3.10000
>2> is_float(3.1).
>true
>
>
>Kostis
>
>
>  
>