{"id":455,"date":"2025-07-29T20:12:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T20:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/permutationcity.co.uk\/bp\/?p=455"},"modified":"2025-07-29T20:12:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T20:12:21","slug":"picking-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/permutationcity.co.uk\/bp\/2025\/07\/29\/picking-a-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Picking a name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve talked about\ngood names<\/a>\nbefore but\nit only briefly touched on the importance of exactly\nwhich words<\/a>\nyou choose.\nWords have meanings and connotations.\nPick the wrong word and people can get the wrong impression.\nHowever good your documentation is that won’t help if the developer thinks they already know how to use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

std::remove<\/code><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The C++ template library provides a lot of useful functionality.\nDuring my early years with C++ it hadn’t really been a feature but\ncoming back to it later on it was much more extensive.\nThe\nalgorithm header<\/a>\ndeals with containers and iterators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, for example, we have\nreplace<\/a>.\nIt goes through replacing anything matching old_value<\/code> with new_value<\/code>.\nThat makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if we wanted to remove some values we would use…\nremove<\/a>?\nLet’s quickly skim the documentation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Removes all elements satisfying specific criteria from the range.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Removes all elements that are equal to value<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sounds great but, no, this is only part of what you want.\nWhat remove really does is move all the values to be kept to the start of the range and\nall the values you want to erase to the end of the range.\nYou’re actually need is something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    auto newEnd = pointers.remove(nullptr);\n    pointers.erase(newEnd, pointer.end());<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Functionally this is… okay.\nYou want to erase some things from a vector and you can.\nIt does require you to use the pointers<\/code> identifier three times so it is repetitive but\nthat’s another problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me the real problem here is the name.\nSurely remove<\/code> should remove<\/em> something?\nIf you’re picking names you want to reflect what’s really going on.\nHere, say, partition<\/code> would be a better fit.\nThe collection is being divided into two.\nThe first section will not have the given value, the second section will only have the given value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually there is a\npartition<\/a>\nand\nstable_partition<\/a>\nas well.\nSo what’s going on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n