Subject: Re: popcount
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
References: <20201230105535.GJ13234@fetter.org>
 <5ea2932e-50f5-4a74-9550-5e3291b6652b@manitou-mail.org>
 <20201230164108.GK13234@fetter.org>
 <eb416bd3-9ee2-8a81-8cd4-d61baaf93ec2@enterprisedb.com>
 <20210111161354.GA8721@fetter.org>
 <e48355d3-efaf-e762-fffa-4b2191680292@enterprisedb.com>
 <338981.1610984050@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>, Daniel Verite <daniel@manitou-mail.org>,
 PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
 Vik Fearing <vik.fearing@2ndquadrant.com>
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
Organization: EnterpriseDB
Message-ID: <d33d668b-bf70-126d-9ca3-ad5a50488091@enterprisedb.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2021 09:06:00 +0100
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On 2021-01-18 16:34, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com> writes:
>> [ assorted nits ]
> 
> At the level of bikeshedding ... I quite dislike using the name "popcount"
> for these functions.  I'm aware that some C compilers provide primitives
> of that name, but I wouldn't expect a SQL programmer to know that;
> without that context the name seems pretty random and unintuitive.
> Moreover, it invites confusion with SQL's use of "pop" to abbreviate
> "population" in the statistical aggregates, such as var_pop().

I was thinking about that too, but according to 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_weight>, popcount is an accepted 
high-level term, with "pop" also standing for "population".