On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 02:56:38PM -0700, Dave Gomboc wrote:
I put about a day into looking at FC++ (reading the papers, trying to
Thanks for taking the time, and thanks for your comments. A couple quick replies:
"Functor" has for years been commonly used to mean "function object" (in addition to its original meaning from category theory). [http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~bala/c++-function-objects.pdf; http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/functors.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functor]. Have no referees of your academic publications brought this up? There is no need to name anew a common concept: therefore, s/functoid/functor globally!
I don't recall this comment coming up from referees of the publications. Note that, to the FP community, "functor" means something completely different from what it means in C++. In any case, "functoids" as described in those papers were a "new concept" requiring a new name. A "functoid" was a "functor" that also supported polymorphic return-type deduction. This distinction is now becoming dated, though. In any case, the overall point here (that the Boost documents on FC++ need to be tailored to a C++ audience, rather than an FP audience) is taken.
[various stuff about names/naming elided]
I have no objections to renaming various entities in the library, and have received a number of good suggestions from many of you these past two weeks. If the library is accepted, I'll try to consolidate the suggestions and make the most commonly-requested changes. -- -Brian McNamara (lorgon@cc.gatech.edu)