String.to_integer/1 why no exclamation mark?

Questions / Help
1

Surely this has been asked and explained before, but for some reason I couldn’t find it.

String.to_integer/1 docs say:

string must be the string representation of an integer. Otherwise, an ArgumentError will be raised.

If an exception is a possibility and there is a convention of marking such functions with a trailing exclamation mark in the name, why doesn’t this function have it?

Thanks!

1 Like
2

Because there is no non-raising analog function with the same name. If you take a closer look, all bang functions have their analogs without bangs.

FYI, If you want to handle parsing error, use Integer.parse

3

That’s not quite correct. In the same conventions linked above we read:

There are also some non-paired functions, with no non-bang variant. The bang still signifies that it will raise an exception on failure. Example: Protocol.assert_protocol!/1.

To be clear, my question is nomenclatural, I’m not looking for workarounds.

4

Hmm, you’re right. Well, it is a good question for someone from Elixir core team