From: Alex Young <alex@...>
Date: 2011-10-05T02:14:37+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:39943] Re: [Ruby 1.9 - Feature #5372][Open] Promote blank? to a core protocol

On 04/10/11 16:52, Nobuyoshi Nakada wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> (11/10/03 6:38), Alex Young wrote:
>> Yep, that's another way to do the same sort of thing, but with a Blank
>> or Null it's more explicit and more flexible.  With a bare
>> "case...else..." you have to handle both correct nulls and erroneous
>> values in the "else" clause. With Null, you can leave the "else" clause
>> purely for handling the error case, where you've somehow got a response
>> you weren't expecting.  I think it's clearer.
> 
> The "flexibility" (or ambiguity) seems the sign that it should not be
> in core, to me.

I'm not sure I understand.  Where's the ambiguity?


> Indeed ActiveSupport has many interesting features, however they are
> basically designed for Rails concerned applications and may not be
> suitable for the language core.

You could make the same argument about any library.  If something is in
ActiveSupport and not in any of the more specifically web-framework
Rails libraries, it's also a sign that it's a feature that people find
generally useful *outside* Rails.

Note that similar functionality is *also* in Facets, which aims for
general applicability.

With respect, I don't find arguments on where a feature has come from to
be be particularly relevant.

-- 
Alex