Re: Keeping both tmpnam and tempname?

[Philip Nienhuis]

Daniel J Sebald wrote:
<snip

> Now, if there are to be aliases, I'd say make it clear rather than
> obfuscate.  Identify they are aliases somehow that saves a lot of reading:
>
>       Alias: tmpnam
>       See also: mkstemp, tempdir, P_tmpdir, tmpfile.

"A lot of reading"?  it still fits on one line.

If you mean to say that all those functions serve largely the same 
purpose but differ only in details, why not combine them into one with a 
few more options than the ML equivalent? That would help clean up more 
(maintenance) than straightforward aliases.

> But as for the tmpnam/tempname debate.  It looks like tmpnam came first
> because the documentation for "tempname" refers to "see tmpfile".  I'm
> assuming tmpnam and tmpfile were an original pair.  So to have
> "tempname" associated with "tmpfile" as opposed to "tempfile" seems odd.

My point is rather that there is probably quite a bit of code around 
having tmpnam, that needs to be changed just to clean up a bit (IMO) of 
clutter w/o much maintenance overhead.

tempname is the ML equivalent, so I suppose it has been implemented 
later for the sake of compatibility.

BTW, Octave's P_tmpdir and tempdir have about the same issue; but I 
surmise these commands are used less frequently.

OK I shut up now, I've made my point.

Philip