From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2005-10-03T11:23:46+09:00
Subject: Re: C++ equivs in Ruby

David A. Black wrote:

>>>   x = 123
>>>
>>> x holds the immediate value 123, rather than a reference to it, which
>>> is the rationale Matz has always given for not having x++ (i.e., it
>>> would be equivalent to doing 123++ and that would make no sense).
>>
>> I don't think that's sufficient, else x += 1 would be equivalent to 
>> 123 += 1.
>
> Not necessarily.  There's no cause and effect link here; each thing is
> decided by Matz.  I was talking about my impression over the years of
> Matz's rationale.

No, I meant the rationale in the above paragraph wasn't sufficient to 
draw the conclusion that ++ made no sense, as my counter-example showed. 
I realize that Matz has final say, and I also don't really care about 
the lack of a ++, so I wasn't trying to argue for it.

> neither possibility (the variable str being reassigned, or having ++
> be a succ! equivalent) would really fit.

You know what I'd really like? A "x .= :succ" notation. I know it's, 
like, totally counter to established Ruby semantics, but it'd save, 
like, (variable_name.size - 2) characters. Sample implementation in 
Ruby, for the * operator:

require 'enumerator'
ObjectSpace.enum_for(:each_object).find_all { |klazz|
  Class === klazz and klazz.instance_methods.include?("*") || klazz == 
Object
}.each do |klazz|
    p klazz
    klazz.class_eval do
      def *(*a); send(*a) end
    end
end

(I'm not recommending that "." be overrideable, just that .= be some 
builtin shortcut. Actually, I'm not really recommending it. Just an 
extended joke.)

Devin