What are the arguments of a string concatenation called?

Question

In real addition, (for example 3 + 7), the first argument is called the "augend", and the second argument is called the "addend".

In concatenating the string "ab" with "abb", to form the string "ababb", are there commonly-used names for the arguments?

I'm asking this from the viewpoint of a software engineer and am after terms for documentation of the concatenation process and wasn't quite content with "string1" and "string2".

Nobody really calls the arguments of addition the augend and the addend. Maybe they did in 1874. Just call the arguments of the concatenation the arguments; there's no need to dig up obscure or obsolete terminology for something simple. — MJD, Feb 21 '13 at 03:21
This would probably be a better fit for programmers.se. At any rate, best practice is to name the strings something related to what their function is — SSumner, Feb 21 '13 at 03:24

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 25 '13 at 18:20

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I would call them "concatenands", because that seems the most logical to me. But I have a hunch you wouldn't find that word in a dictionary.

answered Sep 25 '13 at 18:20

Hammerite

1,003

I'm giving you the accepted answer as you tried to help instead of chastising me for using "obscure/obsolete" terms. Can you think of a way to differentiate them so it's clear that one comes before the other, and it's a non-commutative operation? – Oct 01 '13 at 04:46
You could call them the "preconcatenand" and "postconcatenand" (possibly hyphenating). This is inspired by matrix multiplication (which is also in general non-commutative), wherein we talk about "pre-multiplying" and "post-multiplying" by a matrix. – Hammerite Oct 01 '13 at 20:42
Thanks, this is exactly what I was after ~8 months ago! I'll keep these terms in mind for future. – Oct 03 '13 at 01:05

What are the arguments of a string concatenation called?

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