A request for start/end replacement

[jyuhuan]

This list is a cure to my variable naming OCD!

A word pair to replace start/end is not yet present. This pair is used a lot in NLP. For example, a Span class may have start and end positions. The fact that start is two characters longer than end can surely drive one crazy, and hence this request.

[timvieira]

Nice to meet you :-D I'm glad you're finding this project useful and that you're issuing requests!

I agree start/end is a terrible pair (as is start/stop, begin/end, left/right).

For a List class, head/last are common methods (maybe even tip/end).

For a Span class, I imagine that begin and end are integers with begin <= end. For numeric spans / intervals, I've used lo/hi, which conveys lo <= hi (similar options: min/max, lower/upper, a/b), but it doesn't read as nicely and begin/end or start/end.

Others

• start/cease (similar, but weirder start/finis)
• alpha/omega (sometimes associated with the beginning and the end)

I'll give it some more thought. Lemme know if you find anything!

[mjpost]

Another idea is to borrow a concept from bash shell and use the reverse of a word as the closing concept: so bash's if/if and case/esac become start/trats or begin/nigeb.

[timvieira]

Sure, but eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww!

[kputnam]

Sometimes I use began and ended for this

[timvieira]

Oooh! I like began/ended. Thanks, @kputnam !

[timvieira]

Another good one, which was already on the list:

start -> originate
end   -> terminate

[pbloem]

I tend to go for fr/to when I need short variable names (which is usually the case with indexing).

[pbloem]

This one has some nice alliteration (do we actually want that? it kind of ruins your autocomplete):

first
final

It doesn't work for standard inclusive/exclusive index ranges, but that seems to be the case for most of these. For those you could use

in
ex

from
upto

including
excluding (already in the list)

[timvieira]

All of these are amazing!

first/final and from/upto definitely need to be added to this list!

in/ex is a close call; my hesitation is that they are very ambiguous. to/fr is also too ambiguous - if I were going to be that terse I'd just use letters a/b. I'm actually a huge fan of single-character variable names - just keep the function short/sweet/clear.

Alliteration is a bonus. It stengthens the pair, IMO! Auto-complete will catch up once it digests the justified-variables list 😜

[timvieira]

New developments

commence
complete

[chambln]

See also 61ca507 (#31).

begin
belay

[aravindet]

Where past tenses are suitable, why not just:

started
stopped

I use these in database models (where they usually have a _at, _on or _by suffix). At 7 characters, they also align with:

created
updated
deleted
fetched/visited   [Rather than read (past tense)]