New Issue: [Feature Request]: A better alternative than 'isDefaultRectangular' for checking whether an array/domain is local

Notifications Issues
1

27131, "e-kayrakli", "[Feature Request]: A better alternative than 'isDefaultRectangular' for checking whether an array/domain is local", "2025-04-21T17:15:08Z"

Summary of Feature

Description:
Today, the go-to user-facing way of checking whether an array or domain is distributed is to call the isDefaultRectangular method on them. But the term "default rectangular" is not something user-facing nor intuitive. Can we add a method with a more intuitive name.

Is this issue currently blocking your progress?
No

Code Sample

myArray.isDistributed();

My first reflex was isLocal, but that's tricky. An array can be non-distributed but remote.

Arguably, isDistributed also has some gotchas:

  • Is a block-distributed array "distributed", if the program is run with -nl1 ?
  • Is it distributed if its targetLocales only has a single locale?

To me, the answer is "yes" in both scenarios, but I admit that cases like these are where isDefaultRectangular seems more precise.

An interesting take could be something like hasDistribution. Technically, all arrays and domains have distributions in Chapel, but they are not very first class in the language, and from a user's perspective, it may be thought as if non-distributed arrays don't have a distribution.