If you don't come from Rebol it would probably be weird to you that there are many specific word-types in Rye.
name: Janko ; name: is a set-word - it binds value to a word
?print ; ?print is a get-word - it get's value word is bound to in this case a print builtin function
:age ; left leaning set-word (this is get-word in Rebol)
what? ; just a regular word
...
name get's the value anyway, so we don't need to use ?name but if word is bound to a function just invoking a word will evaluate a function and if we want to return a funtion we use get-word. which has ? in front.
? at the end is just a regular word and a (currently accepted) naming convention where noun? means get-noun. so length? in instead of get-length etc.
Rebol used ? at the end convention for more things, a lot for boolean results, testing of types, like string? and positive? but also for lenght?
For booleans current Rye's naming convention is that we use is-adjective. Rebol used positive? to test if value is positive. We would in this way use is-positive.
The conventions might change if we see that there are ways that make more sense and are also consistent.
Thanks for the explanations. Indeed I don't come from Rebol and the conventions seem like a terra incognita, although I can sense a significant value in them.
From a past romance with Forth I see in general how concatenative languages seem to be underappreciated a bit
? at the end is just a regular word and a (currently accepted) naming convention where noun? means get-noun. so length? in instead of get-length etc.
Rebol used ? at the end convention for more things, a lot for boolean results, testing of types, like string? and positive? but also for lenght?
For booleans current Rye's naming convention is that we use is-adjective. Rebol used positive? to test if value is positive. We would in this way use is-positive.
The conventions might change if we see that there are ways that make more sense and are also consistent.