[Bioperl-l] use of no_* to mean 'number_of', negative booleans

[Hilmar Lapp]

Great suggestions, I'm all for it.

	-hilmar

On Jun 9, 2009, at 12:08 PM, Chris Fields wrote:

> All,
>
> I've noticed a few methods in bioperl with names like 'no_Foo' that  
> mean 'number of Foo' (such as SimpleAlign's no_sequences).  The  
> problem I foresee are possible ambiguities, particularly with  
> negative boolean checks (eg 'no_Foo' could also mean 'this instance  
> contains no Foo'), something that BioPerl also has with various  
> settings.
>
> I suggest we alias these as num_* to disambiguate that.  There's no  
> easy way to change already in-place flag setting w/o going through a  
> deprecation cycle, but we can promote using positive booleans where  
> possible (eg 'is_foo' or 'has_foo' instead of 'no_foo').  We can  
> leave the older 'no_*' methods as is for the time being and maybe  
> deprecate them later.
>
> If no one has objections I'll add these in as needed.
>
> chris
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
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