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

[Mark A. Jensen]

+1, absolutely- MAJ
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Fields" <cjfields at illinois.edu>
To: "BioPerl List" <bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2009 12:08 PM
Subject: [Bioperl-l] use of no_* to mean 'number_of', negative booleans


> 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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