RE: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

>> I think you are making a distinction between names that are
>> core parts of the use of regexps, and names that contain 'regexp'
>> because they stand for something that uses a regexp somehow.
>> Is that right?
>
> Yes.
>
>> And you expect the former to have names that start with 'regexp'
>> (although we have never had such a naming practice for data types).
>> Is that right?
>
> Yes! :-)
>
>> Is the reason you expect the names to follow that pattern
>> that you are coming from a language that uses abstract object tyoes
>> where each type defines methods to operate on it?  Do you wish you
>> could ask, "Show me the operations defined on type 'regexp'"?
>
> Yes, and also because in almost every other languages
> there are namespaces.  Including other lisps (Scheme,
> Clojure).

That's the rub/misunderstanding, I think.  That
namespaces are used does not imply that naming
need be based on object type.  In some languages -
in particular OOP - namespaces are based on types;
in other languages they're not.  Data types are
not the only way to group things.

> Even in Emacs Lisp the namespace concept is used,
> look at the all the `string-*` functions.

There are some, sure.  Nothing says that you
can't have a function that's mostly concerned
with a particular thing type.

And nothing says that in such a case we can't
put that type name in the function name.  But
it's not a requirement for all such functions,
let alone all or even most other functions.

And nothing says that `string' needs to be in
the prefix of such a function, as opposed to
somewhere else in its name.