From: John Carter <john.carter@...>
Date: 2005-05-06T12:43:35+09:00
Subject: Re: RCR 303: nil should accept missing methods and return nil

On Fri, 6 May 2005, Luke Graham wrote:

> On 5/6/05, John Carter <john.carter@tait.co.nz> wrote:
>> I expect if this is accepted to see a bunch of knock on RCR's, namely
>>   nil+n == n
>>   nil * 7 == 0
>> -nil == 0
>>
>> We already have
>>   nil.to_s == ""
>>   nil.to_i == 0
>>   nil.to_f == 0.0
>
> This would be a big change to behaviour and a lot of existing programs
> could have problems with it. Because integers already have a to_i(),
> its possible to do this...

If there were a lot of programs deliberately doing

begin
   # some complex calculation
rescue NoMethodError => details
   # Do some valid functionality, not just error handling
end

I would agree with out.

If they are not doing that, then the program would 
just crash totally. My change would change the behaviour from crashing, to 
Doing The Right thing.

But I don't believe that there are programs rescuing NoMethodErrors/

I bet you could search they whole RAA and find very very little that has
rescue NoMethodError.


John Carter                             Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639
Tait Electronics                        Fax   : (64)(3) 359 4632
PO Box 1645 Christchurch                Email : john.carter@tait.co.nz
New Zealand

This rock is  covered by a very very thin scum  of life. (Think 6000km
of rock followed by a meter or so of biomass.)

Amongst the millions of species in that scum are many hundreds of
thousands of types beetle and a mere handful of primates.