From: "Ara.T.Howard" <Ara.T.Howard@...>
Date: 2005-08-06T00:37:56+09:00
Subject: Re: new block notation

On Sat, 6 Aug 2005, David A. Black wrote:

> Hi --
>
> On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Trans wrote:
>
>>> That's rather drastic. All it needs is a new symbol for literal hashes.
>>> (I like [| |] myself.)
>> 
>> Nah, just use the _collection_ brackets for both array and hash. The
>> parser can tell them apart:
>> 
>>  # array
>>  [ a, b, c ]
>> 
>>  # hash
>>  [ a=>x, b=>y, c=>z ]
>>  [ a: x, b: y, c: z ]
>
> I don't like to have to scan visually for a separator in order to know
> what the [ meant.  That seems ad hoc and fragile.


it's even worse than that:


   jib:~ > ruby -e 'm = lambda{|x| p x};  m [ 0b101010 ]'
   42

   jib:~ > ruby -e 'def m a; p a.first; end;  m [ 0b101010 ]'
   42

   jib:~ > ruby -e 'm = Hash::new{p 42};  m [ 0b101010 ]'
   42


you can't even scan for these - you must know m's type...

-a
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