From: "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@...>
Date: 2004-08-06T23:22:08+09:00
Subject: Re: %w for symbols

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004, Austin Ziegler wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 20:21:25 +0900, Florian Gross <flgr@ccan.de> wrote:
>> Austin Ziegler wrote:
>>> It seems common enough that it might be nice to have this. Perhaps
>>> %W{} instead of %w{} ?
>> %W{} is already taken:
>>
>> irb(main):006:0> %W{1 #{1+1} 3}
>> => ["1", "2", "3"]
>> irb(main):007:0> %w{1 #{1+1} 3}
>> => ["1", "#{1+1}", "3"]
>>
>> And I think that [:foo, :bar, :qux] is already short enough.
>
> Ah, but (to use Gavin's suggested form):
>
> %s(1 2 3) is shorter than [:"1", :"2", :"3"] for any given version.
>
> I don't know how often I'd use this -- I rarely even use %w{} (and
> didn't even know about %W{}), except in unit tests. It seems like a
> good idea, though.

i use them both in almost every program - and would like to see a symbol
version too - but i'm wondering if the OP has noticed that symbols might not
even be needed

   'foobar'.send 'index', 'f' => 0

what i mean is - alot of things that take symbols also take strings.  in my
opinion this is as it should be since yaml makes pulling string data into a
program so trivial.  since i've started using it everywhere i use symbols less
and less and try to write my own code using the following approach

class Klass

   def method args, opts = {}
     foobar = getopt opts, :foobar
   end

   def getopt hash, opt
     hash[opt] || hash["#{ opt }.intern] || hash[#{ opt }]
   end

end

so the string/symbol equiv will hold.  anyhow, just thought i'd point out that
a list of symbols may or may not actually be needed...

i'd vote for the

   %s( foo bar baz )

idea

cheers.

-a
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