From: Csaba Henk <csaba@..._for_avoiding_spam.org>
Date: 2005-03-22T11:14:51+09:00
Subject: Re: strip and its evil brother strip!

On 2005-03-22, Mathieu Bouchard <matju@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> The above form saves you that local assignment:
>> "ab#{foo}de"[1..3].instance_eval { chop!; strip! }
>
> The problem with it, compared to the smalltalk one, is that it changes the
> scope of instance-variables.

That's true. #instance_eval is not the same as what Smalltalk has, but
in the 90% percent of the cases when you'd just like to quickly throw
some thunks at the object in a line, it pretty well does the job.

>
>> It's a very useful method, and I think only its ugly lengthy names
>> keeps it away from becoming one of the most basic rubyisms.
>
> I often use "i" as an abbreviation for instance. I write "ivar" instead of
> "instance variable". Even the C/Ruby API calls them that way. However, the
> subtext of such a phrase annoys me. It suggests a binary opposition that
> asserts the supremacy of the classes over other objects, and effectively
> even ejects the name "object" in favour of some statement of dependency
> (it's always about being an instance _of_ something). I'd rather have them
> called "object variables" or "ovar" but if not then i can accept "ivar" as
> long as i don't de-abbreviate it.

Even then, you don't mention using "ieval" :)

>> It's not even some weirdo which is justified to have weird name
>> because of its weirdness.
>
> Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder... you see, some people have

Sure, what I spoke above is just my personal feeling.

> learnt from the Church of JAVA (tm) that eval is evil and dirty (Ruby has
[...]
> (oh, and if you're not following my postmodernist reasonings, i'm sorry.)

I liked them... Church of Java, sounds as mystic and exciting and
terrifying as the pirates with their treasures and iron hook hands and
half eye and wooden legs when I was a child :)

Csaba