From: jdm <xyz@...>
Date: 2005-10-01T07:31:45+09:00
Subject: suggested changes for ruby libraries

These are all relative to version 1.8.1.
Don't know if any of these (have been)|(will be) incorporated in later versions.

String.delete() currently takes only a String for an argument (albeit with
limited regex functionality such as ^ and c1-c2). It would be useful, and
orthogonal, to take a Regexp as an argument too (orthogonal in that most of the
other String methods involving the specification/identification/location of a
string take both String and Regexp arguments).

Same comment as above for Array.delete().

When String.index() is given a multi-character String argument, it currently
returns the index of the first occurrence of the *first* character of the
argument. It would be useful to add an argument to tell it to return the index
of the *last* character of the argument (this new argument should default to
FIRST). For example:
  "hello".index("lo",FIRST) -> 3
  "hello".index("lo",LAST)  -> 4

A similar argument could be applied to String.rindex().

When supplied with two Fixnums, a Range, or a Rexexp, String.[] returns a
String. But when supplied with a single Fixnum, it returns a Fixnum. For
example:
 a="hello"
 a[2,2]  -> "ll"
 a[1..3] -> "ell"
 a[1]    -> 101
This behavior is very non-orthogonal (otherwise worded as "violates the
Principle of Least Surprise"). String[Fixnum] should return a single character
string as follows:
 a[1]    -> "e"