>
> In Haskell, do you name every function with a
> prefix that advertises the type of its return
> value or one of its main arguments?  No, of course
> not.  How do you find functions that return or use
> a value of a given type?  You check signatures
> or doc.
>

Except if I'm missing somethign Haskell also groups related functions
together:
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/strings-1.1/docs/Data-Strings.html



> As for "alist", "ass(q|oc)", and the like: each
> such choice has its drawbacks.  But yes, some name
> consistency can help, in general.  But no, because
> history.  And no, because different uses/contexts.
>
> The discussion was motivated by considering new
> users, in particular.  Well then, what does a new
> user look for, when it comes to alists?  Does s?he
> know the term "alist"?  Or is the thought about
> "association"? "key-value"? "pair"? "relation"?
> "attribute-value"? "property-value"?
>

It has already been said that alist was a bad example. Consider process or
regexp instead.



> Consider `C-h f alist', with substring matching.
> In my current session I get 156 candidates, all
> of which are relevant to alists.  Great.
>
> If I match `ass' instead, I get 235 candidates,
> many of which are about alists, but many of which
> are not.  If I then chip away from those matches
> the matches for `class' and `pass', I get only 51
> matches, of which 34 are about alists.
>
> If I use `C-h d alist' I find 560 functions
> whose doc mentions "alist".
> `C-h d association list' finds 56 functions.
> `C-h d assoc' finds 52 functions.
>

When I see this it only confuses me. Sure those are great tools to find
things in a broad sense, but there are so much noise that you have to
filter. The only relevant functions I'd like to find are:

assoc, rassoc, assq, alist-get, rassq, assoc-default, copy-alist,
assq-delete-all, assoc-delete-all, rassq-delete-all

Anything else listed there is noise IMHO, except if searching in a broad
scope.



> Finally, the habit of assuming that functions
> should be grouped only by argument or return
> type, either in terms of name or doc, is not
> a guide.  API doc (e.g. JavaDoc) does have its
> uses.  And it's especially useful, perhaps
> even necessary, for certain kinds of languages
> (e.g. OOP).  But it's certainly not the be-all
> and end-all.
>

Agreed. Still I think there is a lot of room for improvement, without going
"all the way".

Philippe