Talk:AlphaRenaming

Duplicate pages with different names?

I'm wondering why there is both a AlphaRenaming and Alpha renaming page? The second is just a redirect to Lambda calculus#α-conversion, but the name chosen for this page seems like a response to "Alpha Renaming" already being taken. Who is ever going to key "AlphaRenaming" into the search box? A Google search turns up about 5 hits, one of which is to this page. Could someone who understands this subject straighten this out? This page already has a link to Lambda calculus#α-conversion, why not delete the "Alpha renaming" redirect and then rename this page to "Alpha renaming"? -- Dougher (talk) 01:33, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

• I agree. I came here to do the same thing. Now as I understand it, "alpha conversion" and "alpha renaming" are almost the same thing, the only difference being that it's not alpha renaming unless the result contains no overlapping scopes. (So $\lambda x.\lambda x.x\Rightarrow \lambda y.\lambda y.y$ is an alpha-conversion but not an alpha-renaming.) Does anybody know if I'm right about this? There also seem to be two aspects to this: one theoretical (lambda calculus) and one practical (name resolution, applied to real languages and analysis). Therefore, I propose to merge this article with Lambda calculus#α-conversion (basically explaining the above definition, and have AlphaRenaming redirect to Lambda calculus#α-conversion), but move the main example here to Name resolution#Alpha renaming to make name resolution trivial, where it is most relevant, adding cross-links between the two sections. — MattGiuca (talk) 06:05, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
• I asked about the alpha renaming versus alpha conversion issue here (which I think will affect how the merge is done). — MattGiuca (talk) 06:36, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
• I've merged this article as suggested above. — MattGiuca (talk) 01:37, 29 October 2010 (UTC)