Re: [boost] [Math/nextafter] A question of naming functions...

From: Kevin Lynch (krlynch_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-04-30 10:05:28

Paul A Bristow wrote:
> I also find the name edit_distance very unintuitive.  In fact I struggle to see from how the definition in Wikipedia it is
> 'technically accurate'.
> 
> "In information theory and computer science, the edit distance between two strings of characters is the number of operations
> required to transform one of them into the other. There are several different algorithms to define or calculate this metric".
> 

I'm the one that called it "technically accurate" yesterday, and I still 
think it is (although it may not be intuitive, and reasonable people can 
disagree, I guess :-) ).

The only "primitive operations" allowed on floating point numbers are 
the arithmetic operations ... you aren't allowed "positional operations" 
or "string indexing" operations the way you are for integers or strings.
So if the question is "How many fundamental, single bit additions does 
it take to get from a to b" ... that sounds to me like an "edit 
distance" (perhaps we should call it the Maddock Floating Point Edit 
Distance for clarity  :-)

I certainly like edit_distance better than most of the other names I've 
seen; "float_distance" in particular seems like a poor choice to me ... 
I think its semantics will be too easily confused with std::distance ... 
but then, what do I know :-)   But I don't really care all that much

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