From: Pit Capitain <pit@...>
Date: 2005-02-22T23:02:03+09:00
Subject: Re: destructive! operations

Caio Tiago Oliveira schrieb:

> Pit Capitain, 21/2/2005 17:04:
> 
>> ES schrieb:
>>
>>> Wouldn't it be possible to override the TrueClass, NilClass
>>> and FalseClass methods to yield the correct behaviour for
>>> this object? I'm assuming 'if something' expands to
>>> 'if something == true' or something like that?
>>
>>
>>
>> If you look at the Ruby source code (this is 1.8.2), in eval.c:
> 
> It shouldn't be in C. Such things should be in Ruby.

Where do you draw the line between core functionality implemented in something 
like C and add-ons implemented in Ruby?

> I don't know C, so I can't learn Ruby?
> So can't I know the behaviours of my changes?

Of course you can. The behavior of "if" is documented here, for example:

http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/tut_expressions.html#UH

I quoted the corresponding source code only to show that there seems to be no 
way to implement an "eating nil" in pure Ruby.

Regards,
Pit