Why to have "Big" in all class names?

[brick]

Why to have "Big" in all class names?

[BenMorel]

Hi! 👋

IIRC correctly my first decimal implementation was called Decimal, but I later decided to match Java's BigInteger and BigDecimal classes.

It looks like these names are industry standard these days: Java, Ruby, maybe others.

Also, I think I had fears that integer might become a reserved word at some point, in the light of early scalar type hinting discussions; this could have become a problem, just like you cannot create a String class anymore in PHP 7. It looks like this threat is over now though.

I'm not strongly against your suggestion, but I feel like Big makes easier the distinction between a class that would rely on native type capabilities (like, a 64 bits Integer), and a class specifically designed to deal with arbitrary-size numbers.

Usually, when you encounter a Big-Something, you know that you're dealing with an arbitrary-size number; when you encounter Decimal or Integer, you're unsure.

Oh, and it gives more visibility to the library for people coming from a Java background :)
(try Googling BigInteger php)

By the way, there may be some usefulness in creating lighter weight classes based on native types. I'm thinking specifically of this Decimal class that I created in another library to support validation of numbers in forms, without adding a dependency on brick/math's BigDecimal (numbers in forms rarely, if ever, exceed 20 digits, and I noticed that some browsers use floating-point numbers to validate them anyway, so this limitation in precision is quite acceptable).

Right now this Decimal class is internal to the library in question, but could very well be extracted in another library if that's useful. This may be a point against your suggestion, if they're ever going to coexist in some project.

Happy to hear your thoughts!

[BenMorel]

I'm going to close this issue due to lack of feedback.
Please feel free to resume the discussion if needed!