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0 pointsesrauch2y ago0 comments

The topic here isn't so much the order but whether "of" in int_of_string matches a common/typical usage of the word.

From the other comments sounds like its local style for OCaml maybe because of some French lineage, but that "int_of_string" is a function that converts a string into an int was definitely not something that I would have assumed (as opposed to 'int_from_string' or something).

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tome2y ago

Well, if the word order is the most important aspect (as it is to me) then you have to think of another word you can use instead of "of". I know that in my early Haskell programming I was writing `intOfString` where other Haskellers wrote `stringToInt`. I'm a native English speaker so it certainly had nothing to do with French! "Of" just seemed to fit naturally there. Do you think "From" or some other English word would be more natural?

marcosdumay2y ago

The Haskell culture clearly dictates "i = fromString s".

And as a consequence, Rust has it standardized as "i = from s".

tome2y ago

What do you do if you want to disambiguate the return type? I suppose `intFromString` works. I'm not sure what I chose `intOfString`. It's not because I'm French!

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IshKebab2y ago

It doesn't sound especially weird to me and I'm not French.

It's just "[create an] int [out] of [a] string"

"from" would have made more sense.

esrauchOP2y ago

The words in brackets are doing all of the heavy lifting in your example though: "Of" without "out of" means "constituted by". If in isolation I saw "array_of_string" I'd definitely parse that as somehow being about str[], not "f(str) -> char[]"

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0 pointsesrauch2y ago0 comments

The topic here isn't so much the order but whether "of" in int_of_string matches a common/typical usage of the word.

0 comments

tome2y ago

marcosdumay2y ago

The Haskell culture clearly dictates "i = fromString s".

And as a consequence, Rust has it standardized as "i = from s".

tome2y ago

What do you do if you want to disambiguate the return type? I suppose `intFromString` works. I'm not sure what I chose `intOfString`. It's not because I'm French!

1 more reply

IshKebab2y ago

It doesn't sound especially weird to me and I'm not French.

It's just "[create an] int [out] of [a] string"

"from" would have made more sense.

esrauchOP2y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse