Common verbs for function / method names

Naming things is hard. Below is a list of verbs that can be used as names for either functions or class methods with descriptions of how they commonly behave. The list should be considered more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.

Good names

Name	Description	See also
acquire See also release	Asks to be given control over some resource in a computer. E.g. database lock, large amount of memory.Acquire/release differ from open/close in that acquire/release typically indicate that the underlying resource has a limit of how many times it can be opened at once, whereas for open/close the underlying resource can (theoretically) be opened as many times as needed at once.	release
close See also open	Tell the operating system that you have finished using a resource in the computer, and that any pending commands sent to that resource should be finalised. e.g. any pending writes should be written to a file.	open
create	Creates a object from the data passed in. Usually returns an object rather than storing it internally. May throw an exception if the data does not meet some required conditions (e.g. is invalid).
dispatch See also execute		execute
execute See also dispatch		dispatch
find	Attempts to locate a piece of data from a containing storage type. If the containing storage does not contain any data by the name parameter, very likely to return null.
get (class property) See also set	Returns a value from the class/data being operated on. No 'get' method should do heavy calculations or throw exception. Or gets a value from a containing storage type	set
get (from container) See also has	Takes a key as a parameter and returns a value from a container (e.g. array, map) corresponding to that key. Generally throws an exception if the container does contain a value corresponding to that key.	has
has	Checks whether a value is available from a containing storage type e.g. does an array contain a key with a particular name. Almost always returns a boolean.
open See also close	Ask the operating system to open a resource in the computer. This operation may fail, and the returned value needs to be checked to be valid.	close
pop See also push	Take an item from a container e.g. array, list, queue, or stack.	push
push See also pop	Add an item into a container e.g. array, list, queue, or stack.	pop
release See also acquire	Release control over a resource given from a call to a acquire.Acquire/release differ from open/close in that acquire/release typically indicate that the underlying resource has a limit of how many times it can be opened at once, whereas for open/close the underlying resource can (theoretically) be opened as many times as needed at once.	acquire
reset See also acquire	Reset and object back to some initial state ready to be re-used.	acquire
set See also get	Set a property of an object, or a global variable. No 'set' method should do heavy calculations. If the value being set is invalid, the function might throw an exception.	get
to See also get	Convert an object from one type to another. e.g. 'toArray', 'toJson'. Generally would not take any parameters, but might if there was some option on how the formatting is to be done.	get
with	Return a copy of the original object, with one or more properties changed e.g. `$user.withFirstName("John")`

Bad names

Maybe we should have a list of bad names here e.g. 'make'... is that 'create' or is it 'execute'?