From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2000-01-12T17:18:37+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:01120] Re: The value of while...


In message "[ruby-talk:01119] Re: The value of while..."
    on 00/01/12, Clemens Hintze <c.hintze@gmx.net> writes:
|> Hmm, but it's a attribute of the statement which cannot be treated by
|                                   ^^^^^^^^^
|Perhaps that is the reason of confusion, IMHO. 'while' should be
|considered as statement, not as expression! Dave is right here, to be
|orthogonal 'while' should also return a value as every expression do!

In Ruby's syntax, statement is just a special case of a expression
which cannot appear as a argument (e.g. multiple assignment).

Currently, Ruby's expression may or may not return value.  The parser
raises error if the program is taking the value from an obvious
non-value-returning expression.

If every expression must have value by definition, it's OK for me to
call non-value-returning expressions as statements, but must it?

|> `break' returning is as interesting as `break' with the label to exit.
|> I couldn't decide.
|
|What about to introduce both? :-)))) If you cannot decide ... take
|both ;-))))

Taking that strategy, Ruby will grow into Perl sooner or later.
We should think one step smarter. :-)

 							matz.