[swift-users] If and Only If

[zhaoxin肇鑫]

I, as a none-native-English-speaker, do think iff as a type error at first
for a long time. And I doubt it as I see it everywhere. But I have never
look it up.

I just use iff as if and do not think there is a much difference. I thank
to Brian for he finally letting me know the real meaning. I think if itself
means iff, but I am not computer major, so I can only represent as a layman.

zhaoxin

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 2:18 AM, Erica Sadun via swift-users <
swift-users at swift.org> wrote:

> I personally wouldn't change it.
>
> A few thoughts:
>
> * It's a well known term of art among developers
> * If you see "iff" more than once, you're going to be curious
> * Hopefully you'll type "*what does iff mean*" into Google at that point
> and Google will respond like this: http://imgur.com/1a7b3rp
> * see also: http://ericasadun.com/2015/09/30/dear-erica-whats-iff/
>
> -- E
>
>
> On Feb 7, 2016, at 9:16 PM, Brian Bauer via swift-users <
> swift-users at swift.org> wrote:
>
> I apologize in advance if this subject has already been discussed and
> decided (as far as I can tell, the mailing list archives go back only about
> 60 days)…
>
> When running through the Swift Tour portion of the Swift eBook, on page 10
> there is a code snippet showing an example of the switch statement.  While
> typing that into an Xcode playground, I get a code completion popup on the
> “hasSuffix” method and the documentation says “Returns true iff self ends
> with suffix.”  This looks like a typo.  I know that it means “If and Only
> If” but to a less experienced developer this is likely to be misunderstood,
> especially as I can find no explanation for “iff” anywhere in the
> documentation.
>
> The source of this documentation nugget is a comment in
> /stdlib/public/core/StringLegacy.swift, so I think discussion of the topic
> is relevant here.
>
> Swift is touted as being friendly to new programmers and I don’t think it
> is reasonable to expect new programmers to understand “iff” and I also
> don’t think it is reasonable to spend a paragraph explaining “iff” at the
> beginning of an introduction to Swift, thus I suggest removing “iff” from
> all code comments that are likely to become user-facing documentation (the
> triple slash).  Or at the very least, user-facing documentation that is
> likely to be read by beginners.
>
> A quick grep of the source gives me somewhere in the neighborhood of 130
> instances of “iff” in a triple-slash comment, and I am more than happy to
> make all of the changes and submit pull requests.  Before taking on that
> work, however, I would like to know if such a change would be welcome or if
> anyone has a better idea, etc.
>
> Thanks,
> Brian
>
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