entireinterval is not a very good name

[dpsanders]

It is the entire real line.

cc @lbenet

[lbenet]

I proposed that name inspired in the ieee standard. There, the entire interval is defined as Interval(-Inf,Inf). I proposed that name since entire is not clear enough. You are right that entireinterval corresponds to the entire real line (as an interval!). Since Interval refers to the one-dimensional case, whereas IntervalBox is for the multidimensional case, I think is ok. Do you have an alternative for the name of that function?

[dpsanders]

I agree that entire is not clear enough.
Maybe entirerealline (ugly) / wholerealline / allreals (I think that is used in some package I have seen)

[dpsanders]

On the other hand, if it is not exported and is IntervalArithmetic.entire(), then maybe it is clear enough, but not very nice to write.

For what it's worth, I like just writing -∞..∞, although it does need quite a lot of typing. Writing -Inf..Inf is actually shorter (in terms of number of keystrokes) than (almost) any option involving the word entire with parentheses ;)

[dpsanders]

How about just reals()?

[lbenet]

From the suggestions, those names do not make clear that the result is an interval (which happens to be the whole real line). I agree with you that, from the point of view of the number of keystrokes, -Inf..Inf seems the best option, though I think the standard requires a specific function for that.

[dpsanders]

I see your point. How about realline()? That does sound like a set.

[dpsanders]

Here's an idea: R() or RR()

[dpsanders]

We could even have e.g. RR(3) for IntervalBox(-Inf..Inf, -Inf..Inf, -Inf..Inf)

[dpsanders]

Note that Julia also has "blackboard bold" ("double-struck") letters, e.g. \BbbR<TAB> gives ℝ

[lbenet]

Yes, let's try it with RR()!

[dpsanders]

Now \bbR. But unfortunately

julia> ℝ = -∞..∞
[-∞, ∞]

julia> ℝ^3
[-∞, ∞]

(of course). Although, we do have

julia> ℝ × ℝ
[-∞, ∞] × [-∞, ∞]

[dpsanders]

And

julia> IntervalBox(ℝ, 4)
[-∞, ∞] × [-∞, ∞] × [-∞, ∞] × [-∞, ∞]

[Kolaru]

entireinterval is fine enough, symbols will be exported in a separate module in 1.0-dev, see #270