Verb for what you do when you have A and do A AND B

Question

Ok, this may seem like a silly question, but it is seriously bugging me. Hoping some fellow programmer has a good word for it!

Thing is, I am making an ExpressionBuilder class to help me build up expressions to use with LinqToSQL. And my problem is about how word myself when describing what two methods. And it kind of is a problem in general for me too when talking about it. Here is the issue:

You have an Expression<Func<T, bool>>, A. Later you get another one, B. You are now going to combine that B with A using && / AndAlso or || / OrElse. So for example like this:

A = A && B;

Alright. So, what did you just do there? What is the verb for what you did with B to A? If you think in a series of this stuff, like A = A && B && C && D && E && ..., you could sort of say that you then "add" F to that series. But that wouldn't really be correct either I feel...

What I feed would be most "correct" would be that you take B and you "and" it to/with A. You take B and you "or" it to/with A. But can "and" and "or" be used as a verb?? Is that considered ok? Feels like incredibly bad English... but maybe it is ok in a programming environment? Or?

Answer 1

Compound?

Naming is always one of the hardest things.

Answer 2

If you are adding (e.g. numbers, or items to a set/list) then I'd say "Add"

If you are concatenating (e.g. strings) then I'd say "Append"

Alternatively... if you are just "adding" another item to a list... "Push" works too

Answer 3

I think it is perfectly ok to use "and" as a verb in this case. You and'd A and B. It just seems bad due to the words AND and OR themselves. If you talk about it with XOR though, it doesn't sound so bad to say you XOR'd something yet you're effectively saying the same thing.

Answer 4

In logic AND is the conjunction operator, so you are conjoining A and B. OR is disjoining.

Answer 5

• If I was speaking to a mathematician, I would probably use terms like "perform a logical conjunction" (or disjunction).
• If I was speaking to a fellow programmer, I would use "and" and "or" as verbs directly.
• If I was speaking with my mom, I would probably just find pen and paper and start drawing Venn diagrams.

Answer 6

Does the output of A feed into the input of B?

If so I'd use 'chain', or 'compose' in the sense of functional composition

Otherwise, if they're independant functions which are being combined, then maybe 'cat' as shorthand for concatenate.

Answer 7

In general, this is composition of functions. Since these functions are all predicates, you're putting them together with the various logical operations, so the specific composition would be conjunction, disjunction, etc. All the basic set theory terms I forgot since college!

Answer 8

How about logically connect?

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_connective

Answer 9

I'd go with Set Notation (Venn Diagrams) when explaining it.

• AND: A intersected with B
• OR: A unioned with B

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/venndiag2.htm