They are controversial. We don't have aliases in Crystal.

Perhaps rename unshift to prepend, but no aliases please.

If absolutely no alias's are permitted I would propose replacing unshift and push. Even though that would be a crippling, breaking change.

I do understand the importance of push if you are using an Array as a stack, but in the context on an Array append makes much more sense.

If it helps I can sed -i 's/.unshift/.prepend/g' **/*.cr && sed -i 's/.push/.append/g' **/*.cr and push that.

Removing Array#push and/or Array#unshift will break a lot of code since they are well-known widely-used idioms.

@Sija - Thats why I am proposing the aliases.

@chris-huxtable I know, yet Crystal doesn't like/use those (aliases).

@Sija - Something that I think is unfortunate. In different contexts similar functions have different names. Let alone the issue with unshift.

Whatever gets decided, it will have some downside.

• push/unshift are widely known and very common accros languages, but difficult to get used to for beginners.
• append/prepend are much easier to comprehend - starting from a blank state they should really be preferred IMO. Yet, having only those would break much code and would alienate experienced programmers.
• having both would introduce aliases which should be avoided in Crystal.

I don't know which way is best. We should look for the least evil.

I don't really understand the aversion of aliases other then API bloat and support. Which aren't insignificant issues. But an outright 'ban' I think as equally problematic.

One of the other things that has confused me is the 'prescriptive' nature of Crystal which is very Python. Where as Ruby is more 'descriptive' which is one of the things I appreciate about it. That is to say there is more then one way to skin a cat.

We should look for the least evil.

No such thing exists, I'd look for better solution :)

But having direct aliases with no difference always creates more api for no gain. So why bother?

I like push and pop for the end of a list, buy also like prepend and ??? For the start of a list.

Why not just have insert and delete with, 0 and -1 for both these cases?

@RX14 - That strikes me as a bit extreme.

Array as it is now works fine. These aliases were just recently introduced in Ruby, I never needed them. Old Ruby coders will now find these new aliases and wonder why they exist. This means they have to learn new things. Maybe decide what name to use from now on.

All of this is a big waste of time, nothing else.

I'm getting tired of issues and pull requests that merely revolve around "matter of taste and preference". Nobody will agree.

We have push, pop, shift and unshift. They're ubiquitous across many languages. They're fine. Close subject. Please.

I know it came from Ruby but... #unshift is really awkward, sadly... :|