From: gabriele renzi <surrender_it@...1.vip.ukl.yahoo.com>
Date: 2004-06-29T04:32:58+09:00
Subject: Re: (oddity) applying objects with #call() implicitly

il Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:38:03 +0200, "Robert Klemme" <bob.news@gmx.net>
ha scritto::

>> "p" may stand for self#p, or a local variable named "p".
>
>True.  It might be inconsistency then, because for a method "foo" and
>"foo()" are identical (apart from, that the latter form does not have the
>ambiguity) but you proposed change would introduce a significant
>difference between "foo" and "foo()".

this is true. It feels better to me, somehow, but that's just my
opinion.

>You probably guessed that I don't like this very much. :-)  

You  don't like my idea! You #�@* 
It's ok for anyone to dislike this, we're just chatting about an idea,
nothing really important[1] :)

>Well, there
>are also reasons: ruby could no longer determine at compile time the
>semantics of this code:
>
>def foo(x)
>  x("bar")
>end
>
>Because x("bar") could be a method invocation or it could be an invocation
>of the Proc instance x. 
>And since we don't have type declarations in Ruby
>you couldn't get this to work.  That's especially true because when foo is
>defined there need not be a method x at all.


I see, even if I fail to see how this is a problem. Say, #x could not
be defined at the time of #foo call, so ruby has to check for
something anyway. In what it differs from checking the type of x ?


>> It is better because it looks like () yet it's worst because it just
>> mimics something hiding it's meaning,
>
>Could you elaborate that?  I don't get the point.  My understanding was,
>that you were looking for a nicer more intuitive syntax to invoke a Proc
>instance.

not a nicer as in 'less typing'. just nicer as in 'mimic the right
thing', say:

 
foo 10
and 
foo(10)
and
foo.call 10

all gives me the feeling of a method call/function application, where 
foo[10]

is array indexing to me.
Obviously the inconsistency is not really removed using the trick I
propose, just moved somewhere else. It just happens I'd prefer seeing
it there instead of here :)


[1] ok, people use to die for Ideas, but that ones are capitalized.