Arc Forumnew | comments | leaders | submitlogin
Nitpick: Why "rem" and not "rm"?
1 point by projectileboy 6165 days ago | 6 comments
Many of the function names mirror nicely to related Unix commands (e.g., pr and prn). Accordingly, shouldn't "rem" be named "rm"?


2 points by bogomipz 6165 days ago | link

I feel rem is a strange name too, but don't feel rm makes it any better. Actually, as others have pointed out, the function isn't really necessary since

  (rem foo my-list)
can be written as

  (keep ~foo my-list)
Personally, I think select is a better name than keep, especially when you start using it on database tables, but that's just me.

-----

4 points by almkglor 6164 days ago | link

Incidentally, keep is written (with some additional fooness) as:

  (def keep (test seq)
     (rem ~test seq))

-----

1 point by bogomipz 6162 days ago | link

Which proves that only one of them is necessary.

I'm sure the implementation could easily be reversed, so keep was the one that actually did the work.

-----

3 points by dfranke 6164 days ago | link

`rem' makes me think I'm looking at a comment. I spent far too much of my youth using DOS.

-----

2 points by partdavid 6164 days ago | link

I would think "remainder" or "remaining", while the "rm" command suggests removal to me.

-----

1 point by sacado 6164 days ago | link

I don't like rem either. BASIC was my first language, and now, everywhere I see rem, at first sight I think it's a comment. I'd like rm much more.

-----