From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2005-04-06T08:31:08+09:00
Subject: Re: [curiousity] why aren't declarations just syntactic sugar?

Lionel Thiry wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I'd like to know why in ruby, a construction like:
>  class MyClass
>   ...
>  end
> 
> isn't just a syntactic sugar for:
>  MyClass = Class.new do
>   ...
>  end
> 
> Is it a problem about block variable binding? Is it a problem of speed? 
> Something else?

I've seen this discussed... I think it's just historical reasons
first of all. I'm not sure this kind of unification was "thought of"
at the beginning.

But there are also other considerations, I think. For example, a block
is a closure, whereas the body of a class definition is not. A question
of scope.


Hal