[ruby-core:18073] Re: New array methods cycle, choice, shuffle (plus bug in cycle)

On Aug 1, 2008, at 4:55 PM, Vladimir Sizikov wrote:

>> [2] And if anyone suggests that sample(1) should return a single  
>> element and
>> sample(2) should return an array, I will ... Well, I don't know  
>> what I'll
>> do.  But it won't be pretty.
>
> Array#first behavior is that without argument it returns the element,
> but with the argument it returns an array of specified size. :)

I _could_ live with:

    arr.sample    => n
    arr.sample(1) => [n]
    arr.sample(3) => [n, n, n]

In general, I will state my objection to methods that return different  
things (different in terms of duck-typing) depending on the *value* of  
their arguments.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich
-- [e-mail]