From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-11-17T02:20:24+09:00
Subject: Re: wondering about #tap (was: Re: Thoughts about Array#compact!, Array#flatten!, Array#reject!, String#strip!, String#capitalize!, String#gsub!, etc.)

On Nov 16, 2007, at 10:36 AM, Nikolai Weibull wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2007 12:40 PM, David A. Black <dblack@rubypal.com> wrote:
>
>> It's interesting that almost every example of #tap ends up saying  
>> that
>> it's probably better not to use it, for one reason or another  
>> (usually
>> readability; sometimes the dangers of mixing bang and non-bang
>> methods).
>>
>> It makes me wonder whether the main effect of #tap is going to be a
>> lot of warnings that it isn't a best practice. Or are there examples
>> that *don't* look worse than the alternatives?
>
> def cleverly_return_an_array_after_building_it
>   Array.new.tap do |ary|
>     [1, 2, 3].each do |i|
>       ary << i
>     end
>   end
> end
>
> instead of
>
> def return_an_array_in_an_unclever_fashion_after_building_it
>   ary = []
>   [1, 2, 3].each do |i|
>     ary << i
>   end
>   ary
> end

Why not:

def build_array
   Array.new(3) do { |i| i } # if (1..3).to_a is cheating
end

James Edward Gray II