[erlang-questions] string:lexeme/s2 - an old man's rant

[Lloyd R. Prentice]

Hi All,

In the grumpy moment when I launched this thread I never expected so many interesting insights and comments.  Now I want to step back and convey boundless gratitude to all who have worked so hard to develop and document Erlang. Thank you.

It’s clear that Erlang, the language, and official documentation are living entities— subject to changes that risk breaking legacy code and programmer expectations and mind set. 

As I understand it, string processing was not so important in telecom applications. But today we see Erlang in chat and web applications where processing natural language is  fundamental.  So pragmatic questions:

— Is the string library sufficiently up to the task in these new domains?
— Can it be improved?
— If so, how?
— Is there an official process through which these questions can be answered and targeted improvements brought to pass?

All the best,

Lloyd

Sent from my iPad

> On May 9, 2019, at 9:31 AM, <empro2@REDACTED> <empro2@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 9 May 2019 23:34:00 +1200
> "Richard O'Keefe" <raoknz@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
>> To be honest, the first time I saw the function name
>> 'tokens', I expected something returning *Erlang* tokens
> 
> That is what I meant by "foisting meaning onto substrings".
> 
> 
>> aString subStrings: separators
>> 
>> The first thing to note is that this actually violates
>> Smalltalk naming conventions:
> 
> First thing I noted was: they also allow more than one
> separator at once. Against a performance argument I weigh
> simplicity, all the more so if separating substrings
> would allow interdependencies (a simple hint at list
> order might suffice to prevent such).
> 
> 
>> 'substrings'. One has renamed it to aString
>> asCollectionOfSubstringsSeparatedByAnyOf: separators
> 
> Reminds me of my contextfreely-descriptive names of 20
> years ago ...
> 
> 
>> One of these days I must really ask to be allowed to edit
>> some of the Erlang documentation, but I'm afraid that if
>> I do people will discover that I'm better at criticising
>> than writing.
> 
> That is why I would like to bring in the host of fools like
> myself, who do not yet "know what is meant" but have
> workforce in numbers. We have to read it anyway and only at
> this point we remember what is "useful" and the questions
> that come up; but I think it unlikely people will go dig up
> source and push pull forget what they were doing. I cannot
> work that way (possibly lack of git routine), and I cannot
> stand to ignore all those opportunities to improve
> something good. So I cannot get on with my rubbish code,
> hit the git-index-stage-cached-confusion, which starts
> all this over again, and ... forget what I wanted to
> do ... :-)
> 
> ~Michael
> 
> --
> 
> Satire is the opium of the intellectual.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions