DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language [LWN.net]

DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language

Posted May 3, 2022 20:25 UTC (Tue) by ssokolow (guest, #94568)
In reply to: DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language by FSMaxB
Parent article: DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language

* What's up with these abbreviations, like e.g. "fmt" and "std". Typing a standard libraries main scope into a search engine shouldn't get you results about "sexually transmitted diseases" and what's up with "Vec"? C++ already admitted that "vector" was the wrong name for a dynamically sized array, rust not only copies that but then abbreviates it on top. Also "fn" and "str" and "recv" and "ctx" etc.

The abbreviations are part of its Ocaml ancestry. That's also where the syntax for named lifetimes comes from (it's Ocaml's syntax for generic type parameters). ...and, more generally, abbreviations like that are common in functional programming languages. See, for example, LISP's famous "defun".