From: gwtmp01@...
Date: 2006-10-12T04:52:02+09:00
Subject: Re: What about 'splay'?


On Oct 11, 2006, at 3:31 PM, Eero Saynatkari wrote:
> I am confused:
>
>   *[1,2]  => 1,2
>
> Right? Read this:
>
>   [1,2].to_a => 1,2
>
> Unless I am misunderstanding something, that is definitely not
> *creating* an Array.

The splat operator has language semantics that go beyond the mapping
of its operand to an array.  I view it as a two step process,
the first step is to map the operand to an array, this is handled by
to_ary, to_a, or the proposed (to_splat|to_values|*@) methods.  The
second step is handled by the language runtime itself so that the two
calls to do_something below result in different argument lists:

	a = [1,2]
	do_something(a)		# one argument, an array
	do_something(*a)	# two arguments, both fixnums

An analogy might be the language semantics of method lookup and how
it is associated with method_missing.  A user provided method_missing
is utilized by the method lookup process but isn't a substitute
for the entire lookup process.

At the moment I like *@ as the method to be associated with the  
prefix * operator.
And maybe its default implementation should be to call to_ary or to_a  
if they
are defined?

Gary Wright