From: Eric Mahurin <eric_mahurin@...>
Date: 2005-09-09T03:49:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Lexical Casts with Ruby

--- Paul Brannan <pbrannan@atdesk.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 02:09:32AM +0900, Eric Mahurin wrote:
> > so you could do:
> > 
> > "10".to(Integer) # 10
> > String.from(10)  # "10"
> > 
> > If this is a good solution for you, maybe an RCR for this
> more
> > general conversion mechanism is in order.
> 
> See RCR#280.  The implementation is 34 lines long.

Don't know why I missed that one.  I don't really like the
implementation with the global (or rather class variable) hash.
 I would rather see an encapsulated API - each class gives
methods for converting to/from objects of other classes of
interest (i.e. String).  You may have duplicated code or one
from_* calling another to_* (or vice-versa), but so what.  This
way requires 0 lines of overhead - nothing needs to manage
framework.  It's simple and is an extension of what we already
have.  The klass#to(toKlass) and klass.from(fromObj) are
shortcuts to get a little more abstract if you want:

class String
  def self.from(obj); obj.to_s; end
  def to(klass); klass.from_s(self); end
end

If you did this, then I guess you could consider this the
overhead for each class that other classes want to convert
to/from - String, Integer, Float, Array, etc.

I would think this more straight-forward approach would be more
likely accepted.



	
		
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