Remove ancestor()/ancestors() in favor of parent()/parents()

[joern]

I don't think we need two ways to do exactly the same thing, and so far parent/parents is far more "popular".

[[email protected]…]

I agree, it is actually confusing to have both. I am still not sure if parents() is an alias of ancestors() or not. The documentation for parents() shows ancestors() in its example.

[Dave]

I prefer parents so this sounds good to me.

[[email protected]…]

I agree. I am not sure why there are multiple ways of calling the exact same thing. Parents is better. Ancestors makes me think of mothballs and wagon trains.

[blair]

Another vote for just parents.

[andrea ercol]

this is easy: get rid of it

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parents() only.

[[email protected]…]

I agree that the duplication is pointless and confusing.

The word 'parent' sounds to me more like just the next node up the tree, whereas 'ancestor' is anything above (although I see my dictionary says that 'parent' can mean 'ancestor' too). Also 'parent' can return one or more parents as we are working on a node set, so the pluralisation is confusing here.

Starting from scratch, I would go for either 'parent' and 'ancestor' or 'parents' and 'ancestors', but both are non-starters from where we are.

'parent' and 'ancestors' makes some sense, and that is what I've used in the past, but the pluralisation is a bit dubious.

So, by a roundabout route, I agree that 'parent' and 'parents' seems the best resolution.

[Alex Cook]

parent()/parents() makes more sense to me, drop the other.

[john]

Done, in SVN rev 777.