TFNR -Collections Comments and categories
Last updated at 12:46 pm UTC on 28 December 2004
While working on commenting and categories I realized that the same selectors were appearing in different categoies in different classes.
Obervations:
- several existing categories are ambiguous
- "Enumerating" being the worst
- Used for iteration, returning collections, counting, copying, etc.
- "Testing" is also used for multiple things.
- It was often used to return true/false but also data that met some selection criteria (creating an ambiguous situation with "accessing"
- "Converting" is also used multiple ways
- Mostly for converting types (asBag, asSet)
- But also for returning data, copying, sorting, counting
Suggestion
- It would be nice for TFNR to have clearly defined unambiguous meaning for categories used across Squeak
- Keep the definition dictionary in Squeak itself or on the Wiki or both.
- It would be nice if members of the deprecated, private, and invalid or campatibility categories did not appear in the -all- list. Or have an –allActive– selection which excludes those that you are not likely to use.
- Some methods which are not valid for a class (i.e., throw an error to override a superclass method) appear in categories with legitimate selectors (e.g., accessing) - I think they should be in an "invalid" or "disabled" category.
