From: Florian Gross <flgr@...>
Date: 2005-03-24T11:04:58+09:00
Subject: Re: RCR 296: Destructive methods return self

Trans wrote:

>>Let's keep talk about this for a moment.
>>
>>We'll finally get keyword arguments in Rite and they're already in Ruby
>>1.9 as well.
>>
>>But what about keyword return values? How would those look?
>>[...]
>>Perhaps (result: a, changed: b) = obj.strip! would work.
>>
>>I think the case of (result: result, changed: changed) would be quite
>>common so perhaps it would be a good idea to introduce a short-cut.
>>Maybe (:result, :changed) = rhs.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand your short-cut. What variables would the
> results end up in?

result and changed. It assigns the keyword return value with that name 
to the variable with that name. It might be very rarely needed, though. 
I think the uncompressed syntax would be more useful.

>   return ( arg1: value1, arg2: value2 )
> 
> Perhaps? Then how does one capture these values, which is what you're
> asking. Yes? Is the return value a hash now as opposed to an array? Or
> is it something different entirely?

That looks nice. I think it would return a Hash.

My suggestion for capturing them is to introduce a new variable 
assignment syntax:

(x: var1, y: var2) = {x: 1, y: 2}
var1 # => 1
var2 # => 2

This might look odd at first, but I think it makes some kind of sense...