[webkit-dev] When should I use AtomicString vs String?

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 9:09 PM, Glenn Adams <glenn at skynav.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Darin Adler <darin at apple.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jun 1, 2013, at 8:54 PM, Glenn Adams <glenn at skynav.com> wrote:
>>
>> > You guys obviously never wrote any Lisp code.
>>
>> Lets not play this game. When I met Maciej he was the maintainer of one
>> of the most popular Scheme implementations, if I remember correctly.
>>
>
> Sorry, I forgot to add a smiley... :)
>
> Seriously, if "Atomic" isn't jargon, Intern isn't either.
>

Neither jargon is good but if we're renaming AtomicString, then the new
name ought be significantly better than the old name because renaming WTF
classes used everywhere has a cost: it makes Subversion history less useful
and adds a churn; people reading the old code need to learn both equally
bad jargons "atomic" and "interned" and that they're the same class.

Another reason I don't think InternedString is a good name is the fact
WTFString also does copy-on-write of StringIml.

In general, the name of a class or a function should convey:

   1. what the class does or how it's implemented
   2. what the class is or should be used for

AtomicString does 2 while InternedString does 1.  We should try to come up
with a name that does both.

- R. Niwa
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