[ruby-core:27316] Re: select!

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 10:19 AM, David A. Black <[e-mail]> wrote:

>> |Is there any reason there's no select!
>>
>> Enumerables cannot have bang method, since they are not always
>> mutable. he reason we don't have Array#select! is that I feel the
>> word select means picking up elements, not removing non-selecting
>> elements. ut I once felt same way to map! and (English speaking)
>> people persuaded me, so same thing could happen on select! as well.
>
> I agree with you. The idea of a destructive select makes no sense to
> me. Selecting implies that there's a result set that's separate from
> the original collection.

I think it's fine.  It's an aggressive selection, like selecting a
sports team from a squad of available players.

> "keep" might be a better name for an operation that's a kind of
> reverse reject!.

It seems wrong to me to invent new names when there's already a logical one.

  reject   reject!
  select    ???

It's obvious what should go there, whether it's immediately appealing or not.

The least you can say is that it's perfectly clear (from the name)
what select! would do if it existed.

As a datum: I've frequently typed select! in the past, expecting it to
be there, so it _is_ useful to me.  (I then add it myself, of course,
but curse having to do so.)

--
Gavin Sinclair