Rename findmin and findmax?

[nalimilan]

findmin and findmax return a tuple with the index of the maximum/minimum, and the corresponding value. This behavior is kind of inconsistent with find, findfirst, findlast, findnext and findprev, which return indices without values. On the other hand, indmin and indmax return only the indices.

It would be more consistent to rename indmin/indmax to findmin/findmax. Of course this is not possible in a single deprecation cycle. I can see two solutions:

• Deprecate findmin and findmax in 0.7, and rename indmin and indmax to findmin and findmax in 1.0. This has the drawback of breaking things between 0.7 and 1.0.
• Rename indmin and indmax to findmin and findmax in 0.7. This introduces breaking changes in 0.7, but at least there wouldn't be any changes in 1.0.

Finally, it's not clear to me whether we really need the current behavior of findmin/findmax, compared with getting the index and then extracting the corresponding element manually. The performance gain should only be significant for very small collections AFAICT.

[dpsanders]

Isn't this basically what is usually called argmin and argmax (although those are not great names)?

[nalimilan]

Isn't this basically what is usually called argmin and argmax (although those are not great names)?

And indeed: #1655.

[nalimilan]

Isn't this basically what is usually called argmin and argmax (although those are not great names)?

And indeed these were the first proposed names for these functions: #1655.

EDIT: see also discussion at #7327.

[StefanKarpinski]

I still like argmin and argmax personally.

[nalimilan]

I still like argmin and argmax personally.

For the method returning just the index (current indmin and indmax), or for that returning both the index and the value (current findmin and findmax)? What name do you suggest for the other pair of methods?

[dpsanders]

Do those need to be separate methods? Is there a cost to always just returning both the index and the value?

[nalimilan]

As I noted in the OP, there's a "consistency cost" (if that's a thing) since find, findfirst, findnext, findlast and findprev all return a single index. That's not the end of the world, but IMHO it's better to use similar names for functions behaving similarly to make the language more predictable.

[StefanKarpinski]

I think we may have to hammer this one out with @JeffBezanson when he gets back as part of #10593. I hate to break the deadline, but I think this needs his input. It will be easier to work though after we've gotten all the other stuff out of the way.