From: Bill Guindon <agorilla@...>
Date: 2004-09-19T08:13:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Method improvement request .--

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 06:29:43 +0900, Charles Hixson
<charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I'm sure there must be a more idiomatic+efficient way to do this, but I
> can't figure it out.  Any suggestions?

Might be easier if you could show a sample of what you're starting
with, and what you'd like it to become.  If the sample is large, you
can always paste it into codepaste (http://www.codepaste.org), and
just put the link to it in the email

> Also, I'm not sure all of the tests are necessary.  Many of them were
> added to avoid "Nil class does not implement..." messages.  Is there a
> better approach?

yes, those still drive me nuts too, but I'm learning :)

> yield a if a and a.length > 0

this can be written as...
  yield a if a unless a.empty?

it won't get to the 'unless' if 'a' is nil, so it dodges the missing
method error.

> return "" unless chunk.respond_to?("[]")

you can avoid this by forcing the issue...
  chunk = [] << chunk
  chunk.flatten!

now chunk is an Array no matter what.  could be an empty one, or could
contain useless objects, but it's an Array ;)

Also... I think parse2 and parse3 can be combined into something like this:

    p2 = p1.split(/(\.\.\.|--)/)
    p2.delete('--')
    p2.delete('...')
    p2.each {|p3| yield p3}

if you can change your editor from tabs to 2 spaces, you're code will
hold up better in the emails.

-- 
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)