From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2003-07-20T02:03:49+09:00
Subject: Re: [Patch] FTP.new with block

Hi,

In message "Re: [Patch] FTP.new with block"
    on 03/07/20, Mathieu Bouchard <matju@sympatico.ca> writes:

|So I think that in this particular case, it works like this:
|
|1. people think they know the Ruby API
|2. people only ever use File.open
|3. people know the block option thereof and use it
|4. people know there is a File.new
|5. people know Ruby has an "alias" feature and that matz uses it
|   (eg. Array#indices,#indexes; Enumerable#collect,#map)
|6. people know that File.open and .new play the same role
|7. people think there is no point in making File.open not like .new.
|8. so people assume there is a common method, with an alias.
|
|that makes sense to anyone?

Reasonable.

But "open" returns the last value evaluated in the block, for
convenience, whereas "new", as I believe, should always return a new
instance.  For me, this is more important than your reason.

							matz.