# Breaking notation convention - a potential anti-pattern?

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/breaking-notation-convention-a-potential-anti-pattern/101699
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** question, convention, notation
**Created:** [July 17, 2023, 5:34pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/breaking-notation-convention-a-potential-anti-pattern/101699 "2023-07-17T17:34:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 7

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### Author: ![mbauman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mbauman/32/31082_2.png) [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2023, 6:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/breaking-notation-convention-a-potential-anti-pattern/101699/7 "2023-07-17T18:53:10Z")

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The `!` is just a convention, designed to be a helpful signal to end users about what the function may or may not do. IMO it all depends on the use-case and how you might imagine callers reasoning about the function call.

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