From: "Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner" <ed.odanow@...>
Date: 2008-01-14T00:30:39+09:00
Subject: Does Symbol#next work unter Ruby 1.9 with intention or by accident?

Dear language designers and developers!

Yesterday I recognized a feature in Ruby 1.9.0-0, that didn't
exist in Ruby 1.8 - Symbol#next...

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\wolfgang>irb
irb(main):001:0> :_1.next
NoMethodError: undefined method `next' for :_1:Symbol
         from (irb):1
irb(main):002:0> exit

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\wolfgang>irb190
irb(main):001:0> :_1.next
=> :_2
irb(main):002:0> exit

This can make a special application very simple, because now
ranges of symbols can be defined...

irb(main):001:0> [*:__0..:__9]
=> [:__0, :__1, :__2, :__3, :__4, :__5, :__6, :__7, :__8, :__9]

Is the existence of Symbol#next done by intention or is it only
available by accident and will be removed later on? -  I would like
to know this, because I have an application where I need such a
functionality and I mus build it myself.

In addition, if it is the by intention, I must unfortunately
report an error...

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\wolfgang>irb190
irb(main):001:0> [*:__0..:__19]
=> [:__0, :__1]
irb(main):002:0> [*:__0..:__29]
=> [:__0, :__1, :__2]
irb(main):003:0> [*((:__0)..(:__10))]
=> [:__0, :__1]
irb(main):004:0> :__10.to_s
=> "__10"
irb(main):005:0> [*:__0..:__99]
=> [:__0, :__1, :__2, :__3, :__4, :__5, :__6, :__7, :__8, :__9, :__10, :__11, 
:__12, :__13, :__14, :__15, :__16, :__17,
:__18, :__19, :__20, :__21, :__22, :__23, :__24, :__25, :__26, :__27, :__28, 
:__29, :__30, :__31, :__32, :__33, :__34, :
__35, :__36, :__37, :__38, :__39, :__40, :__41, :__42, :__43, :__44, :__45, 
:__46, :__47, :__48, :__49, :__50, :__51, :_
_52, :__53, :__54, :__55, :__56, :__57, :__58, :__59, :__60, :__61, :__62, 
:__63, :__64, :__65, :__66, :__67, :__68, :__
69, :__70, :__71, :__72, :__73, :__74, :__75, :__76, :__77, :__78, :__79, :__80, 
:__81, :__82, :__83, :__84, :__85, :__8
6, :__87, :__88, :__89, :__90, :__91, :__92, :__93, :__94, :__95, :__96, :__97, 
:__98, :__99]
irb(main):006:0> [*:__0..:__59]
=> [:__0, :__1, :__2, :__3, :__4, :__5]
irb(main):007:0> [*:__0..:__9]
=> [:__0, :__1, :__2, :__3, :__4, :__5, :__6, :__7, :__8, :__9]

...because it doesn't work as expected.

Wolfgang N��dasi-Donner