From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2004-10-12T10:32:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Directions (was Re: quality of error messages)

Hi --

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, Austin Ziegler wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 09:21:16 +0900, Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:
> > Austin Ziegler wrote:
> > >>I think that you don't have to enforce any particular indentation style or
> > >>amount of space on each line - only that it is consistent between begin and
> > >>end.
> > > No, no, no, and NO!
> > :) Are you still ticked off after your system crash?
> 
> I'm annoyed that I haven't been able to do any Ruby coding for the
> last week :) But I'm also finding these "let's change Ruby into
> something else" discussions rather annoying with some of the proposed
> directions.
> 
> 1) Ranges: I have used the fact of 1...2 including 1.99 but not 2.0 in
> the past. I don't think that this is something I want to change. I
> would like to be able to have mutable ranges (including the ability to
> make a range exclusive or inclusive after creation), but I think that
> the syntax for ranges is right and consistent for 98% of all users of
> Ruby.

With all the recent talk about ranges (much, but not all, of which
I've read), I've been trying to put my finger on why I find the idea
of a mutable Range sort of paradoxical.  I'm far from having any kind
of sound theoretical grounding or rationale... but anyway:

I think of a range as kind of a fact.  For example:  (0..10) is "the
fact of being between 0 and 10, inclusive".  In which case, changing
*that fact* -- e.g., having "the fact of being between 0 and 10"
*itself* become "the fact of being between 6 and 12" -- makes no
sense.  I guess I think of ranges almost more like numbers; it would
make sense to me if (0..10) were literally the same object everywhere
it appeared.  

Anyway, all very speculative, but kind of interesting (to me at least
:-)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net