Re: Thoughts about Array#compact!, Array#flatten!, Array#reject!, String#strip!, String#capitalize!, String#gsub!, etc.

Matz has added Object.tap to Ruby 1.9 which is intended for use in 
method chains and can be used to solve htis problem:

"20Mb string".tap {|s| s.downcase!}.split....

If you want to use it in 1.8, it is trivial:

class Object
   def tap
     yield self
     self
   end
end

Hope this helps,

	David

Wolfgang N叩dasi-Donner wrote:
> Good evening all together!
> 
> I didn't find discussions about that in clr or ruby-core, so I hope it 
> isn't already discussed long ago.
> 
> The methods listed in the header return "nil" when nothing was done. 
> This may be usefull and used in several situations.
> 
> Unfortunately there is possible usage of these methods, when this return 
> value is a very bad thing: In a method-chain like...
> 
> "I am a 20MB string".downcase.split(/\s+/).reject{|s|s.length>20}
> 
> In this case the initial string, the result of "downcase", and of 
> "split" will only be used once - they are single threaded. If, as the 
> example text will name, the original String object is about 20MB, 
> "downcase" will produce a copy, which will be thrown away. The same is 
> true for "reject". It would be much better to use...
> 
> "I am a 20MB string".downcase!.split(/\s+/).reject!{|s|s.length>20}
> 
> ...but this is not possible, because "downcase!" and "reject!" will 
> return "nil" if they have nothing to do.
> 
> It is very easy to build a workaround - e.g. for "reject"...
> 
> class Array
>   def reject_ch(&b)
>     self.reject!(&b)
>     self
>   end
> end
> 
> ...which guarantees that the changed Array will always be returned.
> 
> My proposal IS NOT to change the existing "!" methods, because they may 
> have substancial usage, but to add methods to Array, String, and 
> possibly other classes, that change the objects in place and do always 
> return them.
> 
> I have no ideas about naming (I also have no ambitions in giving names), 
> but I think the functionality will be useful in these standard Ruby 
> classes.
> 
> Wolfgang N叩dasi-Donner
>