[squeak-dev] Invariants give guidance here (was Re: A question about #beginsWith: and #endsWith:)

Tony Garnock-Jones tonyg at leastfixedpoint.com
Fri Apr 22 07:40:15 UTC 2022


On 4/22/22 03:57, David T. Lewis wrote:
> I don't think it is a bug. I can't think of a case where it makes
> sense to say that a string of characters "begins with" or "ends with"
> a string that contains nothing.

I think we (well, certainly *I*) want invariants like the following to hold:

     for all X, Y, Z,
       `Z = (X, Y)` implies `(Z beginsWith: X) = true`.

Without `(X beginsWith: '') = true`, they don't. I think that's a bug.

(It's a classic (even classical) one, too. This kind of problem arose 
with Aristotle's syllogistics and didn't really get properly fixed until 
Frege straightened it all out in the 19th century (!). Aristotle has, 
contra modern logic, universally-quantified statements false where the 
relevant universe is empty; this causes all sorts of havoc, forcing 
nasty exceptions everywhere. Anyone interested in going down this 
rabbithole will likely find [1] diverting!)

Tony

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/generalized-quantifiers/


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