[swift-evolution] ed/ing, InPlace, Set/SetAlgebra naming resolution

[James Hillhouse IV]

Dave, you are correct that in today’s common usage, ‘union’ is solely a noun. And you’re right that nouns don’t have an anything-participle or else ‘nationing’, ‘automobiling’, or ‘lift-offing' would be naturally appropriate, which they are obviously not, at least not yet. 

So, when I first saw ‘unioning’, my first thought was, “Huh”?

But lo and behold, if you go back to an older version of Webster’s, apparently the 1917 edition if Wiktionary is to be believed, it turns out that ‘union’ was both a noun and a verb and therefore at least in that era’s usage had a past participle.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/union#English
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unioning

The reason I commented on ‘union’ as a verb was because, with ‘unioning’ proposed in SetAlgebra, I figured someone in the Swift group must have been a fan of older verb-form usage of ‘union’. That’s what I get for basing my comment on ‘Wiki’-anything.

> On Feb 11, 2016, at 5:05 PM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> on Thu Feb 11 2016, Jim Hillhouse <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
> 
>> Are these function names being based on the present participle of each verb, e.g. 'union' and 'intersect'? 
>> 
>> The present participle of 'union' is technically speaking,
>> 'unioning'. 
> 
> Technically speaking, I'm pretty sure you can't have a participle of
> anything that isn't a verb, and “union” isn't one AFAICT.
> 
> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150843/verb-for-to-form-the-union-of-a-and-b <http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150843/verb-for-to-form-the-union-of-a-and-b>
> 
>> But it is not widely used. In fact, in both Pages and Word, 'unioning'
>> is flagged as a misspelling of 'union'.
>> 
>> The present participle of 'intersect' is 'intersecting';
>> 'intersection' is a noun.
>> 
>> As currently presented, the use of 'union' and 'intersection' are a
>> mixing of rarely used though correct present participle verb tense and
>> a noun. I think it would be better to recognize that 'union' and
>> 'intersection' are two universally used mathematical terms and to
>> forego the suggested verb tense gymnastics.
>> 
>> Jim
>> 
>> jimhillhouse at me.com
>> 512-484-9489
>> 
>> Sent from Jim's iPhone
>> 
>>> On Feb 11, 2016, at 12:09 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution
>>> <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> MHO: +1 on the intention of using less unwieldy names, but -1 on the
>>> specific solution. I fear that the current solution has some
>>> inexplicable inconsistencies and some Englishing which verges, again
>>> MHO, on Hungarianisms that others have mentioned are to be
>>> explicitly avoided.
>>> 
>>> For example, why is it intersection() but unioning()? Surely it
>>> should be either intersecting() and unioning() or intersection() and
>>> union()? Also, I understand that there's precedent elsewhere and
>>> that uniting() is not a good counterpart to union(), but unioning()
>>> is a pretty unsavory mangling of the noun. And then we have
>>> exclusiveOring(), which is just not English.
>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 11:38 AM Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution
>>>> <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi All,
>>>> 
>>>> The API guidelines working group took up the issue of the InPlace suffix
>>>> yesterday, and decided that it was not to be used anywhere in the
>>>> standard library.  We are planning to apply the changes shown here
>>>> <https://gist.github.com/dabrahams/d872556291a3cb797bd5> to the API of
>>>> SetAlgebra (and consequently Set) to make it conform to the guidelines
>>>> under development.
>>>> 
>>>> Comments welcome as usual,
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> -Dave
>>>> 
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> 
> -- 
> -Dave
> 
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