Re: Object#=~

On 06 Jul 2005, at 11:15, Eric Mahurin wrote:

> --- Eric Hodel <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> true  - positive pattern match result
>>> nil   - negative pattern match result
>>> false - don't know (no match was done)
>>
>> daz's suggestion simply defines a convention for existing  
>> behavior, which feels much better to me.
>
> both are changes and both could cause compatibility issues.  I
> think either way causing a compatibility issue would be rare,
> although I have to admit the unknown==nil/mismatch==false would
> probably be more likely.  unknown==nil and mismatch==false
> seems more natural and if a change is going to be made it might
> as well be done right.

daz describes existing behavior, there are no changes other than  
adding "this is the what the return value of #=~ means" somewhere in  
Ruby's documentation.

$ /usr/bin/ruby182 -v test.rb
ruby 1.8.2 (2004-12-25) [powerpc-darwin8.0]
true  - positive pattern match result
'abc' =~ /b/ # => 1
nil   - negative pattern match result
'abc' =~ /z/ # => nil
false - don't know (no match was done)
5 =~ /b/     # => false

-- 
Eric Hodel - [e-mail] - http://segment7.net
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