From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2005-11-09T22:27:50+09:00
Subject: Re: gsub and gsub! are inconsistent

Hi --

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, aurelianito wrote:

>>> what I can see is that there is no consensus on how the bang methods
>>> should behave. May be, the always self returning bang methods can be
>>> made available with an external library (there is an trivial
>>> implementation for a bang method to return always self :D). Is it
>>> already in the facets library? (right there with the "message eating"
>>> nil).
>>
>> You realize you may break the Ruby standard library by doing that?
>
>
> Ups!
> You are right.
>
> I see three choices:
> 1 - use the caller method to change the bang methods to behave
> differently depending on the caller.
> 2 - Use the rubycon tests to check how the standard library works with
> the modified methods.
> 3 - Leave it as is, and complain that I don't like it.
>
> Option number one is really nasty.
> Option number two is too much work.

And also *incredibly* fragile.  It's really not an option.

> Option number three seems to be the right choice.

4. Investigate the various libraries on RAA that let you make
temporary changes to core behavior.
5. Wait until Ruby 2.0 and the possibility of selector namespaces.

(You can of course combine either of this with complaining that you
don't like it :-)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net