Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fresh variable

Fresh variable

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"Fresh variable" is a term of art in computer science literature, whose meaning is essentially equivalent to "new variable". I'm unable to find any discussions of the term itself that would establish notability, and thus this appears to be a WP:DICDEF situation; a wikitionary entry may be appropriate, but none exists yet. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 16:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science, Mathematics, and Computing. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 16:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Lambda_calculus#Capture-avoiding_substitutions, where the concept is explained better and with more context than the current article. I've only seen these in the context of dealing with recursion in lambda abstractions (there is no stack, hence you need to be careful to use substitutions to keep the variables straight), so the redirect target seems appropriate. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:42, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Notability: The concept of fresh (or new) variable is used in many fields of logics and theoretical computer science (not just Lambda calculus). The term appears literally in the articles Boolean satisfiability problem, Lambda calculus, Unification (computer science), Resolution (logic), Standard translation, Hindley–Milner type system. The concept is used in more articles, e.g. in Natural deduction#First and higher-order extensions, where "fresh" doesn't appear, but the term "avoiding capture" is used instead; more occurrences are likely to exist in Wikipedia. DICDEF: The article needs to give a formal definition of the concept, and maybe elaborate on definition variants in differents fields of application. It needs to explain what "capture" means in formal terms, and how to obtain capture-avoiding substitutions. This is far beyond what a dictionary does. (I admit that the current stub needs expansion to meet these requirements. Moreover, I didn't yet find appropriate textbook citations.) - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 23:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Term (logic): or possibly with Rewriting#Term_rewriting_systems. The phrase is used frequently in academic literature, but isn't notable enough for a standalone article. Owen× ☎ 12:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. There's no problem with having a very short article, if multiple independent reliable sources are cited which discuss the topic. Merging small topics into a subsection of a longer article is often worse in the longer term, because it prevents them from expanding to discuss more aspects of the specific topic that would be out of scope at the parent article. –jacobolus (t) 18:17, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many of our current articles started their life as a section in another article before being spun off. The problem with Fresh variable isn't that it's short, but that it lacks evidence of notability sufficient for a standalone article. Under such a limitation, the only viable alternative to merging as a section in another article would be deletion, which I think you'll agree would be a loss. Owen× ☎ 20:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Merging into another article would be OK for me. I'd prefer variable (mathematics) to the above-mentioned Lambda_calculus#Capture-avoiding_substitutions, Term (logic) and Rewriting#Term_rewriting_systems, since the latter three cover just one application field each, while "variable (mathematics)" sounds pretty general. However, I'm not sure that a merge (no mather where) wouldn't result in undue weight of the new "Fresh variable" section. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 10:58, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the interests of consensus, I am not wedded to Lambda_calculus#Capture-avoiding_substitutions, it was just the best single target I found at the time. If this is a unified concept used in a number of different subfields, turning this article into a broad-concept article WP:BROAD may be the way to go. This could be a disambiguation/list class sort of article, introduced with the formal/broad definition of fresh variable you mentioned above. But we'd still need a source for that broad definition to avoid synthesis. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 12:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I think this concept's uses are too wide and varied for merging it with anything to be a good idea, and it has plenty of coverage that would allow it to pass WP:GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:43, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and disambiguation As there are 3 suggested redirect/merge targets, disambiguation may be a better idea --94rain ^Talk 05:51, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]