From: "Berger, Daniel" <Daniel.Berger@...>
Date: 2005-03-23T00:06:37+09:00
Subject: Re: unifying hash and proc syntax

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel VanderWerf [mailto:vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU] 
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 10:02 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: unifying hash and proc syntax
> 
> 
> Hey, crazy idea. Why not use the same syntax for hashes and 
> arrays?

If Ruby had a "List" superclass from which Array and Hash descended,
instead of the Enumerable mixin strategy, this would have been easier I
think.  Presumably (and I'm totally guessing here) a list would have
been anything between square brackets:

[1,2,3,4].kind_of?(List)  # true
[1,2,3,4].kind_of?(Array) # true
[1,2,3,4].kind_of?(Hash)  # false

[1 => 2, 3 => 4].kind_of?(List)  # true
[1 => 2, 3 => 4].kind_of?(Hash)  # true
[1 => 2, 3 => 4].kind_of?(Array) # false

(I believe someone else proposed this syntax earlier.)

This is more along the path that Perl took, where hashes and arrays are
both lists.  Then the {} would then be free, FREE, to be used for
whatever nefarious purposes we could devise.

Not being a language designer, I have no idea if this is better or
worse, if the List superclass is really necessary (i.e. could we still
use a mixin strategy?), or if it would even be possible to implement in
Ruby 2.0.

Who knows?  Maybe I'll learn to design a language someday and give this
a shot to see how it pans out. :)

Regards,

Dan