From: Conrad Schneiker Date: 2000-02-25T04:44:56-06:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:01580] Re: [ruby] Re: Ruby UNIX centric? ((comp.lang.misc; cc: ruby-talk ML)) Yukihiro Matsumoto > > Clemens Hintze writes: > > |I also think so! We could bundle all OS dependend things into a > |special module. I like the way Python has solved it. There is a module > |'os' that used to be imported. Then this module itself imports the > |corresponding 'os_unix.py' or another one! Since Ruby for Windows depends on Cygwin, won't the vast majority of Ruby users always be importing some sort of unix-like module (directly or indirectly) in any case? > UNIX rules. We have to teach about better world to guys living on > other platforms. :-) Wasn't the latest Apple OS supposed to have some form of UNIX at it's core? But the original post 4 levels back in this thread suggests a more fundamental question of what Ruby's purpose in life is, over and above being a super-cool OO tool. If Ruby is to also supposed to serve as (in addition to other things) a very pragmatic, very high level applications, systems, and integration programming language (which may partly be how at least some of it's present or future funding may be justified), then being at least partially POSIX centric in terms of built-ins is perfectly reasonable, more or less on par with having built-in arithmetic with the most commonly used (by humans) default radix of 10. > Putting a joke aside, I think we can have POSIX features builtin to > Ruby at least. `import sys', etc. annoy me very much. they are among > the things I don't like in Python. More generally, there is a difference between being somewhat platform independent and being deliberately platform blind, like Java for supposedly provably harmless browser applets. To exaggerate only slightly, I think many POSIX functions are sufficiently common that forcing you to import POSIX functions would be like forcing you to import the English names for looping construct and conditional statement keywords. Conrad