[ruby-core:109499] [Ruby master Feature#18368] Range#step semantics for non-Numeric ranges

Issue #18368 has been updated by zverok (Victor Shepelev).


Thanks, @mame, for a summary.

I'd like to emphasize, though, that the "undesirability" of undesirable behavior looks very mild to me:

1. I don't see how something like this can happen accidentally (save for some very weird code that does `range_passed_by_user.step(value_passed_by_user)` and deliberately **relies** on the error being raised for values with the semantics of `+` being other than addition)
2. When somebody consciously tries to use `#step` (or `#over`) with arrays, I don't see how the results would be confusing: "it just uses `+`" is really easy to explain and understand
3. It is rather a thing that can bring accidental joy by its simple consistency, as shown in https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18368#note-5

----------------------------------------
Feature #18368: Range#step semantics for non-Numeric ranges
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18368#change-98667

* Author: zverok (Victor Shepelev)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
----------------------------------------
I am sorry if the question had already been discussed, can't find the relevant topic.

"Intuitively", this looks (for me) like a meaningful statement:

```ruby
(Time.parse('2021-12-01')..Time.parse('2021-12-24')).step(1.day).to_a
#                                                         ^^^^^ or just 24*60*60
```
Unfortunately, it doesn't work with "TypeError (can't iterate from Time)".
Initially it looked like a bug for me, but after digging a bit into code/docs, I understood that `Range#step` has an odd semantics of "advance the begin N times with `#succ`, and yield the result", with N being always integer:
```ruby
('a'..'z').step(3).first(5)
# => ["a", "d", "g", "j", "m"]
```

The fact that semantic is "odd" is confirmed by the fact that for Float it is redefined to do what I "intuitively" expected:
```ruby
(1.0..7.0).step(0.3).first(5)
# => [1.0, 1.3, 1.6, 1.9, 2.2] 
```
(Like with [`Range#===` some time ago](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/14575), I believe that to be a strong proof of the wrong generic semantics, if for numbers the semantics needed to be redefined completely.)

Another thing to note is that "skip N elements" seem to be rather "generically Enumerable-related" yet it isn't defined on `Enumerable` (because nobody needs this semantics, typically!)

Hence, two questions:
* Can we redefine generic `Range#step` to new semantics (of using `begin + step` iteratively)? It is hard to imagine the amount of actual usage of the old behavior (with String?.. to what end?) in the wild
* If the answer is "no", can we define a new method with new semantics, like, IDK, `Range#over(span)`?

**UPD:** More examples of useful behavior (it is NOT only about core `Time` class):

```ruby
require 'active_support/all'

(1.minute..20.minutes).step(2.minutes).to_a
#=> [1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 9 minutes, 11 minutes, 13 minutes, 15 minutes, 17 minutes, 19 minutes]

require 'tod'

(Tod::TimeOfDay.parse("8am")..Tod::TimeOfDay.parse("10am")).step(30.minutes).to_a 
#=> [#<Tod::TimeOfDay 08:00:00>, #<Tod::TimeOfDay 08:30:00>, #<Tod::TimeOfDay 09:00:00>, #<Tod::TimeOfDay 09:30:00>, #<Tod::TimeOfDay 10:00:00>]


require 'matrix'
(Vector[1, 2, 3]..).step(Vector[1, 1, 1]).take(3)
#=> [Vector[1, 2, 3], Vector[2, 3, 4], Vector[3, 4, 5]]

require 'unitwise'
(Unitwise(0, 'km')..Unitwise(1, 'km')).step(Unitwise(100, 'm')).map(&:to_s)
#=> ["0 km", "1/10 km", "1/5 km", "3/10 km", "2/5 km", "0.5 km", "3/5 km", "7/10 km", "4/5 km", "9/10 km", "1 km"]
```


**UPD:** Responding to discussion points:

**Q:** Matz is concerned that the proposed simple definition will be confusing with the classes where `+` is redefined as concatenation.

**A:** I believe that simplicity of semantics and ease of explaining ("it just uses `+` underneath, whatever `+` does, will be performed") will make the confusion minimal.

**Q:** Why not introduce new API requirement (like "class of range's `begin` should implement `increment` method, and then it will be used in `step`)

**A:** require *every* gem author to change *every* of their objects' behavior. For that, they should be aware of the change, consider it important enough to care, clearly understand the necessary semantics of implementation, have a resource to release a new version... Then all users of all such gems would be required to upgrade. The feature would be DOA (dead-on-arrival).

The two alternative ways I am suggesting: change the behavior of `#step` or introduce a new method with desired behavior:
1. Easy to explain and announce
2. Require no other code changes to immediately become useful
3. With something like [backports](https://github.com/marcandre/backports) or [ruby-next](https://github.com/ruby-next/ruby-next) easy to start using even in older Ruby version, making the code more expressive even before it would be possible for some particular app/compny to upgrade to (say) 3.2

All examples of behavior from the code above are real `irb` output with monkey-patched `Range#step`, demonstrating how little change will be needed to code outside of the `Range`.



-- 
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Unsubscribe: <mailto:[e-mail]?subject=unsubscribe>
<http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-core>