Made last set of positional arguments available in DynamicMap

[jlstevens]

This PR is intended to address issue #705

@philippjfr It is a simple change but it would be good if you could review it anyways.

[philippjfr]

Not sure I'm entirely happy with the name args, it really doesn't tell me anything, last_args might be okay but really it's the last generated key, calling it args seems confusing. Maybe it would make sense to change the semantics of last and last_key on DynamicMaps to point to the most recently generated objects rather than the last one in the sorting order?

[jlstevens]

Maybe it would make sense to change the semantics of last and last_key on DynamicMaps to point to the most recently generated objects rather than the last one in the sorting order?

I would prefer to keep DynamicMap as similar to HoloMap as possible. I'm happy to call it last_args if you prefer.

The reason I think args is the correct name is that args and kwargs are the standard names when considering callables. Talking about 'keys' in this case seems like it would be confusing to me...

[philippjfr]

The reason I think args is the correct name is that args and kwargs are the standard names when considering callables. Talking about 'keys' in this case seems like it would be confusing to me...

Don't really agree, our NdMapping based datastructures are about keys and adding another name for what is really just the last generated tuple key makes it seem like a separate concept when it really isn't. The DynamicMap is asked for a key and that key is passed as the args to the callback, so the args is a concept the callback worries about but at the DynamicMap level we should be talking about keys.

[jlstevens]

... at the DynamicMap level we should be talking about keys.

If you like, but I don't think we should change the semantics of last or last_key. Do you have another suggestion for a name?

[philippjfr]

If you like, but I don't think we should change the semantics of last or last_key.

Yea, you're right, probably not a good idea. I'll think about it.

[jbednar]

most_recent_key? current_key?

[jlstevens]

last_executed_key?

[jlstevens]

I think that streams make this a bit more complicated as there are now *args (anything in kdims, whether streams or not) or **kwargs which are streams not in the kdims. Only the *args part could be considered a key...

[philippjfr]

Should we close this? With addition of Callables this is probably quite out of date. I wouldn't mind if we made the last key and stream values available on the Callable though.

[jlstevens]

I wouldn't mind if we made the last key and stream values available on the Callable though.

That would be reasonable and yes, I agree this original approach is now out-of-date. I don't think the Callable should know about keys versus streams but the arguments for the last call should be made available somehow.

[philippjfr]

Opened an issue for the suggestion and closing this PR as outdated.

[github-actions]

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