From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2010-08-20T13:25:37+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:31791] Re: [Feature #3715] Enumerator#size and #size=

Hi,

In message "Re: [ruby-core:31785] [Feature #3715] Enumerator#size and #size="
    on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:08:44 +0900, Run Paint Run Run <redmine@ruby-lang.org> writes:

|An enumerator is effectively immutable. The existence of #size= and
|potentially invoking a Proc for each call to #size, implies that its
|maximum size will change over the course of the iteration. Is this
|likely? If not, we can remove #size=, and treat the Proc as a thunk,
|which would be simpler and faster.

We have discussed the issue in the ruby-dev before.  The conclusion we
had then was that:

  * it is nice to have a way to tell the number of items without
    actual iteration.
  * but Enumerator#size is not a good API, since not all enumerators
    would have the way to tell the numbers of items.  Permutations and
    combinations are rather exceptions.
  * Enumerator#size= was worse, since it would make enumerators mutable.
  * we haven't got the better API after some discussion, so we
    preferred not adding it to adding unsatisfying #size.

							matz.