CoCoA » CoCoA-5

I understand we want to keep Der for backward compatibility.

Since we have deg, den, det why not also der?

My preference is for deriv in both CoCoALib and CoCoA-5, but that is not backward compatible :-/
I think deriv is clearer than der (or Der).

I also have a mild preference for binomial over bin; maybe binom is also a candidate.
One reason I do not like bin so much is that it is an english word (meaning something like "cestino").

Any change to these names is naturally not backward compatible; so if we do change them (as I hope we do),
it would be good to make a definite improvement (ideally beyond simply replacing a capital by a small one).

No need to do any change: the official names are indeed binomial and deriv as in cocoalib.
I'd rather keep Bin and Der working smoothly for some more time.

By "smoothly" do you mean that it should not yet be moved to obsolete.cpkg5?

We could even move Bin to obsolete.cpkg5, perhaps with the "obsolescent" print command being activated only after a certain date:

define Bin(n,r)
  if date() > 20171231 then println "***WARNING*** Bin is obsolescent, please use binomial instead" endif
  return binomial(n,r)
enddefine

In any case, I think we should make sure that all existing packages use the "correct", "modern" names.

John Abbott wrote:

By "smoothly" do you mean that it should not yet be moved to obsolete.cpkg5?

Yes, that's what I meant

In any case, I think we should make sure that all existing packages use the "correct", "modern" names.

Every so often we should run the tests without the BackwardCompatible package. (I thought you have done it a few times)

Anna Maria Bigatti wrote:

Every so often we should run the tests without the BackwardCompatible package. (I thought you have done it a few times)

Unfortunately you are right that we should do it; maybe I had even done it some time ago (I don't recall now).
After my next check in, it will be mostly OK. There is a problem with the "backward" syntax: Ideal(xy,z) gives an error that the fn Ideal cannot be found. What to do? The simplest is just to update all such calls...

I think there is no other way: with the * in place, or as ideal(***[xy,z]***).

Can we move Der and Bin to obsolescent.cpkg5?

John Abbott wrote:

Can we move Der and Bin to obsolescent.cpkg5?

yes.