Some thoughts on "minor" identifiers

Today I realized something interesting: I wrote a function in Python which should convert a list of booleans into a string with a specific format.The string is used to generate an image visualizing a chart. Because it is a compressed form of the boolean list, I call it "shrinked string". I thought about the identifier of the function and got something like this (in Python syntax)

def convert_to_shrinked_string(boolean_list):

But I was very happy with this because I had the strong feeling that this identifier would be unusual. I can not explain this feeling, it just was there. After some tries I had this idea, which I was quite happy with:

def as_shrinked_string(boolean_list):

I saw this kind of identifiers in the official Java Class Libraries:

Arrays.asList()
Collections.asLifoQueue()

It seems that it is quite useful and common to leave out the verb in some cases. I have seen that in only in cases of "Converting Operations" yet (if you know one other, please tell me via a comment ;)). But, what implications does this have for iDocIt!? iDocIt! extracts its suggestions on aspects to document from the verb of the identifier and won't work without a verb.

On a conceptual layer this is not a problem, because sentences without a verb exist also in linguistics. These sentences are called "minor sentences", e.g. "Great!" or "Yes, please". In these examples the verbs have been omitted due to shortness and convenience. But both sentences could be completed by a subject and a predicate such as "That is great!" or "Yes, please do it". I believe it is the same with the minor identifiers. One could say that "as_shrinked_string(...)" is the short form of "convert_to_shrinked_string(...)" or "get_as_shrinked_string(...)". So, the verb-centric concept of iDocIt! covers this kind of identifiers. But it is not supported in the current version of iDocIt!.