Re: generic method names for collections

[Jay Glascoe <jglascoe@jay.giss.nasa.gov>]

On Mon, 9 Nov 1998, Jay Glascoe wrote:

> But anyway, I see no reason why generic method names need be tied down to
> the meaningless triplet ref/set!/del!  We should choose more
> understandable names for the benefit of Scheme-newcomers. 

Dylan uses element/element-setter/remove-key!

http://www.harlequin.com/education/books/DRM/

I think lookup/insert!/remove! are good

find/add!/delete! another possibility

I would like to reserve a name for inserting all elements from another
collection, i.e.

add! foo-bar foo-bar
add! foo-bar list

or maybe

unite! foo-bar foo-bar

(possibly have a intersect!, and I still like consume!)

In retrospect, "ref" isn't so bad.  But I do think "set!" should be
avoided if at all possible.

> 
> 	Jay Glascoe
> 	jglascoe@jay.giss.nasa.gov
> 
>