a few small generalizations

[affeldt-aist]

Co-authored-by: @holgerthies

Motivation for this change

Checklist

• added corresponding entries in CHANGELOG_UNRELEASED.md

- [ ] added corresponding documentation in the headers

Reference: How to document

Merge policy

As a rule of thumb:

• PRs with several commits that make sense individually and that
  all compile are preferentially merged into master.
• PRs with disorganized commits are very likely to be squash-rebased.

Reminder to reviewers

• Read this Checklist
• Put a milestone if possible
• Check labels

[affeldt-aist]

I merge because this is a strict generalization and the CI is green.