From: Mikael Brockman <mikael@...>
Date: 2004-08-19T14:32:06+09:00
Subject: Re: When to use parentheses around method args?

Richard Dale <Richard_Dale@tipitina.demon.co.uk> writes:

> On Patrick Logan's blog he gives a ruby example in discussing design
> trade-offs implementing a visitor/decorator pattern with search trees that
> are a mixture of elephants and boxes of elephants. 
> 
> http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CourtesyImplementation.html
> 
> But I just couldn't work out what the code meant at first - it took me about
> 5 mins of staring at it before the penny dropped..
> [...]
> It's like one of the 'Escher mind teasers' where you seen a cube from one
> perspective, and then suddenly your brain flip-flops to another one.
> 
> Are there any rules of thumb for when it's a good idea to leave out the
> brackets and when to use them?

In method definitions, I use parens unless there's only one argument.
In method calls, I use parens when I need to, or when omitting them
looks weird.

  mikael