From ...
Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!212.74.64.35!colt.net!newsfeed.esat.net!nslave.kpnqwest.net!nloc.kpnqwest.net!nmaster.kpnqwest.net!nreader1.kpnqwest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: How to split a string (or arbitrary sequence) at each occurrence of a value.
References: <873d4pjlwy.fsf@inanna.rimspace.net> <sqg08pqjmg.fsf@cam.ac.uk> <y6citdlarzk.fsf@octagon.mrl.nyu.edu> <9q70d5$3q4$0@216.39.145.192>
Mail-Copies-To: never
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Message-ID: <3211917326833236@naggum.net>
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway
Lines: 29
User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 23:15:29 GMT
X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@Norway.EU.net
X-Trace: nreader1.kpnqwest.net 1002928529 193.71.66.49 (Sat, 13 Oct 2001 01:15:29 MET DST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 01:15:29 MET DST
Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:17737

* Christophe Rhodes
| See <URL:http://ww.telent.net/cliki/PARTITION>, wherein a
| community-discussed function is described in roughly specification-level
| detail, with links to a reference implementation.

* Marco Antoniotti
| I am sorry to be sooo nagging (again) on such a stupid matter. But......
| The name PARTITION is inappropriate.  SPLIT-SEQUENCE is much more
| descriptive of what the function does.

* Tim Moore
| Get over it!

  But "partition" is such a _fantastically_ bad name, especially to people
  who know a bit of mathematical terminology.  Effectively using up that
  name forever for something so totally unrelated to the mathematical
  concept is hostile.  It is like defining a programming language where
  "sin" and "tan" are operations on (in) massage parlor just because the
  designers are more familiar with them than with mathematics.  "Partition"
  is a good name for a string-related function when the _only_ thing you
  think about is strings, or sequences at best.  At the very least, it
  should be called partition-sequence, but even this sounds wrong to me.

  I tend to use :start and :end arguments to various functions instead of
  splitting one string into several, and make sure that functions I write
  accept :start and :end arguments, and that they work with all sequences
  and useful element types, not only strings and characters.

///