A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive) • Hacker News Board

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#11

Post by pftburger » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

Wouldn’t this be a normalized / unitized float?

Or at very least an absolute normalized float

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#12

Post by spicybright » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

I'd personally go with "percent", but because there's so many correct options, it shouldn't matter as long as it's consistent in the code base. Otherwise it just becomes bike-shedding bait.

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#13

Post by peteretep » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 7:52 AM UTC

spicybright wrote: post #12

I'd personally go with "percent", but because there's so many correct options, it shouldn't matter as long as it's consistent in the code base. Otherwise it just becomes bike-shedding bait.

Right but it’s specifically not, and liable to make people think “3” is an acceptable input

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#14

Post by wruza » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 7:56 AM UTC

The real answer to this XY is comments and documentation, imo. If you want to make it obvious without reading docs or code, get an IDE with doxygen-aware completion.

Edit: also, put it into typename, not into argname.

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#15

Post by 0xBA5ED » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 7:57 AM UTC

"float zero_to_one" is pretty short and obvious. The caller can maybe even guess by the context of the function name that it probably accepts 0 and 1.

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#16

Post by sgtnoodle » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 8:02 AM UTC

I typically use "_fraction" to indicate this in floating point variable names, along with a comment explicitly mentioning the range from 0 to 1 somewhere. Seems to minimize confusion pretty well.

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#17

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 8:03 AM UTC

bridgeland wrote: post #7

Given that no existing word is quite right for this common problem, a neologism is best. And "primantissa" delights: I will smile every time I use it.

[deleted]

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#18

Post by aappleby » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 8:03 AM UTC

Perunit

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#19

Post by sgtnoodle » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 8:03 AM UTC

xvedejas wrote: post #10

parliament32 wrote: post #3

I'd agree with "portion" or "part" -- describes a percentage in decimal notation, to me at least.

What about "fraction"? That's what I tend to use in my own code, although it could be greater than 1 potentially.

That's a feature, in case you need to crank the power up to 11.

Re: A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

#20

Post by _ZeD_ » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 8:04 AM UTC

Better languages will let you call the variable just "accuracy", but with type "float 0 to 1 inclusive" with some literal syntax; so from

    function FuncName(float AccuracySOMETHING)

to

    function FuncName([0...1] accuracy)