From: Guillaume Cottenceau <gc@...>
Date: 2001-06-01T06:35:16+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16098] Re: Block arguments vs method arguments

Sean Russell <ser@germane-software.com> writes:


[...]

> 2) Right now, variations of '<' already give us four or five meanings for '<' 
> in Ruby ("append", comparisons, bit operations, and HERE string quoting), 
> whereas '|' has two (block variable delineation and bit operations).  I would 
> be a *touch* more confused having '<' and '>' obtain yet another meaning.

That isn't a big deal since we will use a "closed" version here, sticked
to the beginning of the block. Pretty understandable. My first experience
with Ruby and || in blocks was being a bit surprised (or and shell-pipe
meanings in my mind), but the same conditions applied here, and I got used
rapidly.


> 3) An argument for ':var' over '<var>' can be made in recognizing that:
> 	my_proc { |  var1, :var2 | }
> is more flexible than
> 	my_proc { < var1, var2 > }
>
> I shudder to imagine that attempts to solve this might lead to declarations 
> such as:
> 	my_proc { < var1 > | var2 | }

Now that's a pretty important argument. I agree. This shows an important
[well, seemgingly important.. we never know what Matz will find here :)]
advantage to your solution.


[...]

> 4) '<' and '>' are sharp, pointy glyphs, denoting hard, angry imagery; they 
> are unfriendly characters, and someone could get hurt using them.  Studies 
> show that people who overuse '<' and '>' are more prone to violence than 
> those who don't;  this is supported up by the fact that there are very few 
> incidences of workplace violence in Lisp-shops. (Ahem...)

:-)


-- 
Guillaume Cottenceau - http://mandrakesoft.com/~gc/