FWIW, John Rohrlich came up with “ThingByNameTry” and we’re going with that — seems perfect to me in terms of semantics, brevity, etc.. Also, having the extra “Try” modifier at the end is good so both methods show up together in alpha-sorted docs lists etc. Cheers,
- Randy > On Feb 3, 2019, at 9:26 PM, Randall O'Reilly <rcoreil...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I’m trying to figure out the best convention for the basic function of > accessing elements in a container (specifically in the context of GUI > elements in the case of GoGi / GoKi https://github.com/goki/gi, and also in > our new biological neural network simulator in Go: > https://github.com/emer/emergent). > > The key issue is that we have containers that return an interface, which the > user then needs to convert into a particular type. If you have multiple > return values from the accessor, then you cannot do this conversion directly > in one line. Sometimes you know your access will succeed, and other times > you don’t — if you’re unsure, you’ll be checking for failure anyway.. > > So, first of all, it seems like we need two methods, one with a single return > value of the interface, and another with two return values (either an > additional error or a bool — there is another question as to which..). The > native Go map accessor nicely gives you the option depending on how many > variables you give it, but we don’t have that luxury with regular methods > (Go2 proposal??). > > The question is: which method should be the “default” and which should be > “marked” with an extra label, and what should that label be? > > Option 1: fast, risky version is the default, use “Check / WErr / Safe” (or > another better name?) for the safer version that returns an error. E.g., > when looking up an element by Name, you might have: > > • ThingByName(name string) Thing > • ThingByNameCheck(name string) (Thing, error) // or WErr (“with err”) or > Safe or ?? > > Option 2: opposite: > > • ThingByName(name string) (Thing, error) > • KnownThingByName(name string) Thing > > I have used option 2 in GoGi / GoKi, and like the label “Known” as capturing > the idea that you don’t need an error because you know it will work (although > are there even better options?), but I also feel like I use the “Known” case > more frequently, and therefore it should be the unmarked default, and provide > the affordance for new users that they should generally use that version and > do their conversions directly and efficiently, e.g., foo := > Container.ThingByName(“foo”).(*Actual). > > Thanks for any advice! > > - Randy > > ps. while I’m emailing, I just setup a google groups email list for anyone > using GoGi / GoKi etc: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/goki-gi — I’m > planning to do a lot of work soon getting the 3D part of it working finally, > and will email updates there — will be a fair bit of disruption for a while, > though the 2D API should remain largely stable (also modulo the outcome if > this discussion..) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
