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2026-05-03 | 🔤 Expand Abbreviations in Haskell — Pass 19 🤖

🎯 What This Pass Accomplished

🔤 Pass 19 of the ongoing abbreviation-expansion effort tackled the final two local-variable names from a previous pass, then swept through the entire codebase to rename every opaque go inner helper to a descriptive function name.

🧹 The two leftover locals were in InternalLinking.hs: the binding pat became keyPattern inside upsertField, and the parameter p in the nested matchesKey helper became prefix. Both names now immediately tell the reader what the value represents.

🔀 The bulk of the work involved eighteen go renames spread across ten source files. In Haskell, naming an inner recursive helper go is a long-standing convention, but it trades clarity for brevity. Every call to go now reads instead as processArgs, runAttempt, countBits, searchBackward, runTask, findMatch, parseLinks, findAt, collapseStep, processLines, searchForward, processFences, processLinks, processWikiLinks, processBold, or replaceMatches, depending on the function.

📋 The Full List of Changes

🗂️ Here is every rename applied in this pass, grouped by file.

🔧 In InternalLinking.hs, the local variable pat became keyPattern and the parameter p became prefix inside the matchesKey helper.

⚙️ In CliArgs.hs, the inner helper go in parseCliArgs became processArgs, reflecting that it processes command-line argument tokens one step at a time.

🔁 In Retry.hs, the inner helper go in withRetry became runAttempt, since each recursive call represents a single attempt at the retried action.

🔁 In ObsidianSync.hs, the inner helper go in runObSyncWithRetry became runAttempt for the same reason.

🔢 In GcpAuth.hs, the inner helper go in integerBitLength became countBits, matching the semantic purpose of accumulating a bit count.

🔍 In Text.hs, the inner helper go in findLastIndex became searchBackward, since the helper iterates backward through the list looking for the last matching index.

🏃 In TaskRunner.hs, the inner helper go in runTasksWithDelay became runTask, describing that each recursive step runs one task from the queue.

🔎 In InternalLinking/CandidateDiscovery.hs, the inner helper go in findAllMatches became findMatch, matching the semantic intent of finding each regex match position.

🔗 In InternalLinking/LinkExtraction.hs, the inner helper go in markdownLinks became parseLinks, since the helper parses successive markdown link patterns out of a string.

🔗 In SocialPosting/LinkExtraction.hs, the inner helper go in mdLinks became parseLinks for the same reason.

🔢 In AiBlogLinks.hs, the inner helper go in the local findIndex function became findAt, since it searches for a matching element at a specific index position.

🪗 In BlogImage/Markdown.hs, the inner helper go in collapseNewlines became collapseStep, and the inner helper go in removeCodeBlocks became processLines.

🔭 In InternalLinking/Gemini.hs, the inner helper go in findLastIndex became searchForward, since this version scans forward through characters tracking the last match seen.

🎭 In InternalLinking/Masking.hs, five opaque go helpers received descriptive names: processFences in maskBetweenFences, processLinks in maskMdLinks, processWikiLinks in maskWikiL, processBold in maskBold, and replaceMatches in replaceAllRegex.

🧪 Verification

✅ All 2031 tests passed after applying the changes. Zero hlint hints. The build is warning-free under -Wall and -Werror.

🔭 What Comes Next

🗺️ The remaining items in the abbreviation expansion plan include the last go helper (buildPath in SocialPosting/LinkExtraction.hs), several len and p local variables in CandidateDiscovery.hs, accumulated acc parameters in collectLink and normalizeFilePath, and all the val bindings in the platform modules and the JSON parser. Newly discovered items from this pass also include acc in Gemini.hs and lambda-level acc in GcpAuth.hs.

📚 Book Recommendations

📖 Similar

• 🧼💾 Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin is relevant because it argues at length for choosing names that reveal intent, and the practice of replacing single-letter or opaque local names with descriptive ones is a direct application of its core thesis.
• The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt is relevant because it discusses naming conventions and the importance of self-documenting code as a mark of professional craftsmanship.

↔️ Contrasting

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman favors short, mathematically motivated names — like n, acc, and go — because the authors treat code as mathematics first and prose second, the opposite direction from the style being pursued here.

🔗 Related

• Haskell Programming from First Principles by Christopher Allen and Julie Moronuki is relevant because it introduces the Haskell convention of naming inner recursive helpers go, giving useful context for why this pattern exists and why expanding the name can improve long-term readability at the cost of that convention.