Do you have a suggestion for a name of my function?

I have written a nice little function which I would like to put on the File Exchange. However, I am still looking for a short and decent name for it. So I thought to ask here, for inspiration.

The function takes a vector that can contain consecutive identical elements. It returns an index vector that (re-)starts counting from 1 whenever V changes. An example

V = [10 10 10  4  4 10  9  9  9  9  9]
% and a call to MyFunction(V) returns
    [ 1  2  3  1  2  1  1  2  3  4  5]

Any suggestions are welcome!

[John D'Errico]

This is sometimes the hardest part of writing a function - what to call it. You want a memorable name, since the user needs to be able to use it, and this helps improve user code readability. A short name would be nice of course. Unused is important too.

Answer 1

[Charles Dunn]

This is similar to Run Length Coding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_encoding). You could call it RunLengthCounter

[Jos (10584)]

Alas, no option to accept several answers, but this put me on the track of runs.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

"BoatyMcBoatFace" (Google it if you missed this current event ;-) )

Answer 3

[Stephen23]

Nice idea, sometimes I have needed an efficient tool to do exactly that!

Is there any similar inbuilt function? There seems the be little precedent for the name.

The term "run" is commonly used to describe contiguous sequences of one value (e.g. RLE). I find count alone is a little bit misleading, as the function does not count the runs themselves, rather the elements within each run.... however adding the prefix "re" makes it clear that this is no ordinary run counter:

runrecount

The "shape" of the output also implies some possible names:

runsteps

runstairs

and some slightly more esoteric names (aka geek humor):

penrosecount

eschercount

EDIT:

runstepcount

runscountidx

[Jos (10584)]

:-D

Answer 4

[Jos (10584)]

Thanks for the inspiration!

What about runindex? Or is this confusing with regard to existing functions?

[Stephen23]

 runcumindex ?

[Jos (10584)]

Not so sure. What is cumulative about it?

[Jan]

It is a cumsum(ones()) with restarts.

The runs are repeating sequences: stammercount

I prefer runindex.

Answer 5

[Chad Greene]

How about ratchet.

[Stephen23]

+1 outside the box and into the gear chain.

Answer 6

[Jos (10584)]

Thanks all! Nice to see, you all agree that RUN (or boat) should be part of the function name. I'll use runindex as the function "indexes runs".

You can download the snippet here: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/56131-runindex

It can also do simple run-length encoding.