From: GOTO Kentaro <gotoken@...>
Date: 2002-07-25T20:06:17+09:00
Subject: Re: [PATCH] object.c ruby.h (fwd)

At Thu, 25 Jul 2002 05:05:46 +0900,
Dave Thomas wrote:

> I'd expect to be able to test it with an assert(), but currently I
> can't without writing extra (and distracting) stuff.

Indeed assert() of Test::Unit::Assertions does not test true/false.  
I think that the assert() is too generic and that can blur the meaning
of an assertion.  Perhaps true-false-test may prevent abuse of
assert() in rubyunit.

> At the same time, I'm wondering if it would be possible to unify nil
> and false, so that they were both the same object?

Something built-in to get truth value of each object may help explain
the boolean aspect in Ruby.

  % ruby -e '
  module Kernel
    def truth() !!self end
  end

  p nil.truth  
  p false.truth
  p :else.truth

  '
  false
  false
  true 

-- Gotoken