Unique Names

Functions for generating names.

unique_name(prefix::AbstractString, separator::AbstractString = "#")::AbstractString

Using short, human-readable unique names for things is a great help when debugging. Normally one has to choose between using a human-provided short non-unique name, and an opaque object identifier, or a combination thereof. This function replaces the opaque object identifier with a short counter, which gives names that are both unique and short.

That is, this will return a unique name starting with the prefix and followed by the separator (by default, # ), the process index (if using multiple processes), and an index (how many times this name was used in the process). For example, unique_name("foo") will return foo for the first usage, foo#2 for the 2nd, etc. If using multiple processes, it will return foo , foo#1.2 , etc.

That is, for code where the names are unique (e.g., a simple script or Jupyter notebook), this doesn't mess up the names. It only appends a suffix to the names if it is needed to disambiguate between multiple uses of the same name.

To help with tests, if the prefix contains ! , we return it as-is, accepting it may not be unique.

Example

using TanayLabUtilities.UniqueNames

unique_name("foo")

# output

"foo"

Second usage

using TanayLabUtilities.UniqueNames

unique_name("foo")

# output

"foo#2"

Force not unique

using TanayLabUtilities.UniqueNames

unique_name("foo!")

# output

"foo!"

Second usage

using TanayLabUtilities.UniqueNames

unique_name("foo!")

# output

"foo!"