Why are there three implementations of every rule: in rules.py, basicrules.py and editor_actions.py?

[RazinShaikh]

These implementation are not always the same and slightly differ from each other but still implement the same core functionality. Is there a reason why we need three versions? Can we unify these?

[jvdwetering]

rules.py was the original set, and meant for automated application in bulk. I added editor_actions when I was working on the editor, and these were specifically meant to be applied one at a time in an editor context. basicrules.py was added to have some simple functionality that Aleks wanted to use in a course. I think basicrules and editor_actions probably have a lot of overlap since I'm not sure Aleks was aware of the things in editor_actions.
It is probably possible to unify them all. But maybe @akissinger has an opinion on whether basicrules.py should be preserved.

[RazinShaikh]

It is probably the best to unify them all. Even if rules are meant to be applied one at a time, the implementation in rules.py should be able to take care of that. The editor_actions methods can be wrapper that simply call the rules.py methods with a single match.

I am trying to fix several rewrites for multigraphs and I am finding that I have to do the same work three times as the methods are all implemented slightly differently. For example, I fixed the bialgebra of basicrules.py but trying to make a similar change doesn't automatically work for editor_actions.py and I need a lot of debugging time to figure out the quirks.

[RazinShaikh]

If the purpose of basicrules.py is mainly educational, then isn't it better to move it out of pyzx (or at least deprecate it)? I have noticed that ZXLive arbitrarily uses basicrules.py and rules.py. This can possibly lead to inconsistent behaviour.