From: Tilman Sauerbeck <tilman@...>
Date: 2005-01-13T07:01:28+09:00
Subject: Style question - how to represent properties

Hi,
I'm sorry, but I couldn't think of a more concise subject line.

I'm currently writing Ruby bindings for libeet, which serializes C
structs to disk.

Objects that should be serializable with EET implement the
"to_eet_properties" method, which currently looks like this:

def to_eet_properties
	{
		"name" => [@name],
		"foobar" => [@some_fixnum, :int]
	}
end

So, to_eet_properties must return some kind of enumerable object, and
each entry has at least two attributes, a tag and value.
Optionally, there's a third attribute. If it's omitted, some default value
will be used instead.

I'd like to improve the way the user enters these properties.
The hash-of-arrays I use currently doesn't feel like the right way to do
this, is there a better way?

I thought about having the hash accept a single value as a value, too:
{"name" => @name}
but I don't know whether it's a good idea to have it use an array in
some situations and a single value in another.

Any recommendations?

TIA

-- 
Regards,
Tilman