[MINOR] Issue: Change "slice" vs "partition" in exception messages (and code?)

[asmith26]

What changes were proposed in this pull request?

Came across the term "slice" when running some spark scala code. Consequently, a Google search indicated that "slices" and "partitions" refer to the same things; indeed see:

• This issue
• This pull request
• This StackOverflow answer and this one

Thus this pull request fixes the occurrence of slice I came accross. Nonetheless, it would appear there are still many references to "slice/slices" - thus I thought I'd raise this Pull Request to address the issue (sorry if this is the wrong place, I'm not too familar with raising apache issues).

How was this patch tested?

(Not tested locally - only a minor exception message change.)

Please review http://spark.apache.org/contributing.html before opening a pull request.

[srowen]

Can you look for other similar occurrences? I generally agree that 'partitions' is preferred in docs and messages.

See http://spark.apache.org/contributing.html too. Add [MINOR] to the title for example.

[asmith26]

Thanks for the info @srowen

Regarding similar occurrences, I can't find any usages of "slice" within any remaining exception messages (searching with grep), however it would appear there are lots of usage in the general code (as indicated via GitHub search) that perhaps could be made clearer.

[srowen]

Look at SparkALS.scala in examples. That could be fixed.
Arguably so should all of ParallelCollectionRDD but that isn't user-facing.

[asmith26]

Great find!

I found a possible few more running the following from the spark root dir (which I know won't necessarily find all):

$ grep -ir "slice" | grep -i "usage"
examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/SparkLR.scala: * Usage: SparkLR [slices]
examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/BroadcastTest.scala: * Usage: BroadcastTest [slices] [numElem] [blockSize]
examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/SparkALS.scala:        System.err.println("Usage: SparkALS [M] [U] [F] [iters] [slices]")
examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/MultiBroadcastTest.scala: * Usage: MultiBroadcastTest [slices] [numElem]
examples/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/examples/JavaTC.java: * Usage: JavaTC [slices]
examples/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/examples/JavaSparkPi.java: * Usage: JavaSparkPi [slices]
sql/catalyst/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/catalyst/expressions/stringExpressions.scala:  usage = "_FUNC_(str, pos[, len]) - Returns the substring of `str` that starts at `pos` and is of length `len`, or the slice of byte array that starts at `pos` and is of length `len`.",

Shall I substitute "partition" for "slice" in all of the above?

[srowen]

I agree with fixing all of the examples. The catalyst class is something else, shouldn't be changed.

[asmith26]

Thanks for confirming, all done - please feel free to let me know if you find any others (or if I've made a mistake with my commits).

Thanks for your help!

[srowen]

Merged to master

[SparkQA]

Test build #3650 has started for PR 17565 at commit 844df10.