From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2006-10-13T06:40:27+09:00
Subject: Re: What about 'splay'?

On 10/12/06, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@gmail.com> wrote:

> Now under the current 1.9 none of these examples work, even _why's case trick.

I went back and checked, and _why's case trick for arrays does work under 1.9.

I'm still concerned about what this change in 1.9 does to EXPLICIT use
of the * operator.

I'd suggest that a more conservative change might be to continue to
use to_a for explicit splatting, i.e. when the * is actually coded,
and reserve implicit coercion via to_splat/to_values whatever for
cases like

def foo
   return 1, 2, 3
end

a, b, c = foo

Also I'd argue that *expression should be allowable anywhere a list of
variables is allowed as a source of values, and that those should all
be handled consistently.  These would be:

     in an actual parameter list to a method.
     in a series of values on the right hand side of a (parallel) assignment.
     in the comparison list of a when clause in a case statement.
     in the parameter list of a rescue clause

any more?  I think that *expression can be used in all of these, but
it's not treated consistently in how the expression gets coerced to a
list of values.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/