From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2004-12-12T06:18:50+09:00
Subject: Re: puts / print as method not keyword?


In message "Re: puts / print as method not keyword?"
    on Sun, 12 Dec 2004 05:38:33 +0900, zuzu <sean.zuzu@gmail.com> writes:

|and so i also feel that
|
|   string.puts(STDOUT)
|
|or i'm probably thinking more like
|
|   string.puts {STDOUT}
|
|much more closely follows the so-called "Principle of Least Surprise".

It is very interesting to see how POLS differ person to person.
That's one of the reasons I discourage use of the word POLS in any
proposal. ;-)

"puts" was taken from UNIX C output function, which takes an output
string as an argument, so that it is more natural (for me at least) to
take functional form.  I would be astonished very much when puts takes
output destination as an argument.

"display" was inherited from Smalltalk.

|see, my concern then is that the "to where?" question becomes much
|more obvious in the second, and much more necessary as ruby grows
|beyond just a virtual machine running inside a unix environment or as
|ruby grows as a networked language.   perhaps i don't just want the
|default STDOUT but would like to specify tty3 versus tty9 or perhaps
|window7 of some screen tty multiplexing session or how emacs manages
|buffers, and so on...
|
|oh, also, correct me if i'm wrong, but method/function argument
|passing really should only be used for CONSTRAINTS _not_ DATA.

I don't see any obvious reasons behind your opinion.  Can you
elaborate?

							matz.