On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Andrea Faulds <a...@ajf.me> wrote: > > On 24 Jul 2014, at 21:23, Zeev Suraski <z...@zend.com> wrote: > > > CPython is the name of the implementation, but python.org offers you to > > download Python, not CPython. CPython is an internal name kind of like > > php-src (more or less). In fact, as an average end user, you'd not know > > about CPython at all. > > Of course. So far as users care, CPython is Python. So far as users care, > Zend PHP/ZPHP/CPHP/php-src/vanilla PHP/whatever is PHP. > > However, from an internals perspective, we need to be able to distinguish > the two and this becomes particularly important now due to HHVM and the > specification. > > So, we should decide on a name for the original PHP implementation. > -- > Andrea Faulds > http://ajf.me/ > > I still think that Python/CPython is a good example, it shows how confusing can it be when the reference implementation and the language has a different name: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17130975/python-vs-cpython As Zeev mentioned the CPython name is mostly just used for to refer to the vanilla implementation when comparing to others, but the codebase of it still refer to itself as python. I think the only case when you can have a separate name for the reference implementation than the name of the language is at the start, if you do it anytime later, it will cause some headaches, but it isn't impossible as we can see from the python example.
Ruby is also an interesting example, there are also a bunch of alternative implementations, the reference implementation refers to itself as ruby, and when comparing it to other implementations it is either called MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter) or CRuby. -- Ferenc Kovács @Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu
