OpenEuphoria

left, right? head, tail? which one?

• Posted by Jeremy Cowgar <jeremy at co??ar.com> Apr 24, 2008
• 765 views

Ok... We have some functions that are dealing with sequences (can be applied to 
sequences or "strings"). I am waffling between using left/right or head/tail
naming conventions. What are your thoughts? Functions that use these are, for
instance:

left("John Doe", 4) -- "John"
left({{1,2},{3,4},{5,6}}, 2) -- {{1,2},{3,4}}
right("John Doe", 3) -- "Doe"
tail("John Doe", 3) -- "Doe"
pad_left("ABC", 6) -- "   ABC"
pad_head("ABC", 6) -- "   ABC"
pad_tail("ABC", 6) -- "ABC   "
trim_tail("ABC   \r\n\t", 0) -- "ABC"
trim_head("...ABC", '.') -- "ABC"
trim_head("\r\t\nDEF ABC", "\tFD\n E") -- "ABC"

I am wondering if the naming scheme of head/tail is better than left/right. When
I think of head/tail I think of lists, which these functions do work on (I only
gave the one example of left() as to not be too verbose in my example).
Left/Right seem to apply more to strings (which these functions will work on as
well, as you see).

Thoughts?

--
Jeremy Cowgar
http://jeremy.cowgar.com