From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju@...>
Date: 2001-06-04T07:04:57+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16190] Re: RCR: treatment of ranges within array definitions

On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Phil Tomson wrote:
> In perl if I put a range into an array that range is expanded so that the
> array contains each element described by the range (Perl doesn't have a
> range type).  So in perl if I do:

There is no "range" in Perl so it is not "expanded" into an "array".

Using the dot-dot operator in list context creates a list of consecutive
elements. List juxtaposition means list concatenation. A list may be
assigned to an array. 

> So, here is my poposal:  When a range appears within an array definition
> (between '[' and ']') expand the range into an array containing each of
> the elements defined by the range unless the range is defined within
> parenthesis.
> [...] They would have to change it to: [(0..4),(3..5),(20..24)]
> in order for it to work that way if this RCR were implemented.

Instead of adding such special cases to the language, I'd recommend using
something like this: 

def expand_ranges(a)
	r=[]
	a.each{|e|
		case e
		when Range; r.push *(e.to_a)
		else r.push e; end
	}
	r
}

matju