On 1991-07-25, Jim Blandy introduced the alias `search-forward-regexp'
for `re-search-forward'. Why? Lost in the mists of time. Possibly for
the same reasons people are advancing now - make all the search functions
begin with "search-" for supposed easier searching (of their names). In
master we currently have 3534 occurences of re-search-forward and 134 of
search-forward-regexp. Would anybody here argue that Emacs is the better
for these 134 alternatively named function calls? I'd say it was a
mistake, and there is nothing positive to offset the confusion.
Or `delete-backward-char' and its alias `backward-delete-char'. We have,
respectively, 5 and 36 uses. To me, this is just confusion, whatever the
original reason was for these aliases.
I say we shouldn't add to such confusion.
Very good historic points. I hate these aliases, never know which to pick. Every second gained in supposed discoverability is crushingly offset later on by a thousand seconds of second-guessing and doubt over which version to prefer. It's a really bad deal. Shall I try to be modern, or maintain consistency with this program? I have plenty of those doubts with much more important stuff already (iterative/recursive, functional/imperative, etc, etc) I don't need new ones about naming. What a waste of time.
João