From: Markus <markus@...>
Date: 2004-10-14T01:05:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Directions (was Re: quality of error messages)

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 02:19, Robert Klemme wrote:
> "Markus" <markus@reality.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> > >
> > > still... for coding, i love slice! / gsub! etc. they are
> > > amazingly useful constructs. i can't imagine living without
> > > them :)
> >
> >      The odd thing is, all you are generally getting with them is a bit
> > of syntactic sugar.  Consider the relationship between:
> >
> >     s = gsub(p,v)
> >     s.gsub!(p,v)
> >
> >     i = i + k
> >     i += k
> 
> It's not only sugar.  It's different semantics and different performance
> (see the other post with the benchmark).  There are enough circumstances
> where you don't know whether someone else still holds a reference to an
> instance at hand.  As an example, that's the reason why Strings when used
> as Hash keys are duped and frozen if they are not yet frozen.
> 
> Kind regards
> 
>     robert
> 

     In your previous response to this same post you at least included
the rest of my statement:

> Unless you have lent a friend a reference to s and are using it to 
> send secret messages, you aren't really depending on the mutability 
> of strings so much as the modifability of variables.

     In my response I further clarified my point, that most users of
gusb! use it not because they want the modification to affect some other
reference to the same string, but simply as a shorthand.  Instead of
trying yet again, to clarify a point that we both obviously understand,
I will address a more interesting point:

     Why do you keep taking my remarks out of context to "rebut" them?

-- Markus