Re: naming functions [was: Ibuffer: w and B default to buffer at current line]

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  tino.calancha@gmail.com,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2016 12:23:33 -0700
> 
> I *think* that your point about "every command is also a function" is just a
> bit orthogonal to whether we should be multiplying the semantics of our
> functions -- be they commands or not. Clearly "string-append" should not start
> logging to disk, or "current-time" suddenly gain the ability to compute the
> volumes of spheres based on special arguments.
> 
> If your point is that this is vague, and can only be decided on a case-by-case
> basis, then yes, you've convinced me of that. I'll speak up whenever I see it
> happen, and we can discuss again in the context of particular issues.

Yes, my point is that where exactly to draw the line in the sand is a
judgment call in each particular case.  Some of the cases are crystal
clear either way, but that's rare.  Plus, we've been lumping together
similar or related behaviors in a single function since day one; in
particular every forward-SOMETHING function will do the equivalent of
backward-SOMETHING when invoked with a negative argument; that's a
very frequent paradigm in Emacs.  And there are others.  It's
more-or-less the distinct flavor of our programming, "the Emacsy way"
of doing things, if you want.