[GAP Forum] "IsRationalNumber" as synonym for "IsRat"

[Asst. Prof. Dmitrii (Dima) Pasechnik]

Dear all,

it seems to me that functions like IsRat, etc are an artefact of very
old GAP versions, which lacked proper typing (I guess --- I started
using GAP almost 20 years ago, and I don't recall such details).
Instead of calling IsRat(x), one nowadays is better served by
containment predicate like
x in Rationals

IMHO GAP should deprecate all these IsRat, IsInteger, etc, in favour of such
containment predicates.

As far as synonyms IsRational for IsRat, etc, are concerned, I cannot
but point out that  the design of GAP has evolved from using very long
function names to shorter and shorter. It seems that the present
generation of GAP developers favours shorter names.

Best,
Dima



On 25 February 2012 02:30, Keshav Rao Kini <krkini at ntu.edu.sg> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 08:16, Attila Egri-Nagy <A.Egri-Nagy at herts.ac.uk> wrote:
>> In a
>> computer algebra context I see no possibility of misunderstanding
>> 'IsRat', as opposed to a Zoo management software.
>
> I would point out that this does not address discoverability, i.e. new
> users of GAP would not just guess that there is a function called
> "IsRat". They would probably try "IsRational" first, because this is
> more canonical than an abbreviation. Of course, you may respond that
> they should RTFM, which is probably true :)
>
> -Keshav
>
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