From: Kaspar Schiess <eule@...>
Date: 2005-02-23T00:32:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Proposal for nil, 0, and "" in an if statement

(In response to news:41EFDE9C-84DF-11D9-8B41-0011243148CC@refinery.com by 
Gavin Kistner)

> To be clear - the proposal is NOT to make Ruby act like one of the many 
> other languages where "", 0 and friends are treated as non-truth values 
> in boolean expressions. The proposal is simply to add an additional 
> method to all that allows a programmer to treat them the same in the 
> few cases where that is desirable.

I can't see why this method should be added to all of Ruby.. it seems to 
apply to a special case you need to handle. You know, it is perfectly ok to 
change stdlib just for your project... this is what Ruby is about. 

I feel very at home with the distinction between empty and nil that is made 
currently. In the case of financial data that may have empty cells I would 
propose to add a small class layer between that has an empty? method.. thus 
solving the problem in an app specific way and not changing the language. 

kaspar 

--
Keep Ruby Clean Initiative ;)