From: dblack@...
Date: 2005-12-08T11:34:36+09:00
Subject: Re: They say I write Ruby like Perl

Hi --

On Thu, 8 Dec 2005, Steve Litt wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I wrote some hierarchy handling classes in Node.rb
> (http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/Node.rb/index.htm), and I've been
> told I write Ruby in Perl style. In future software, what could I do to write
> in a more Ruby-like fashion?
>

For style things (avoiding camelCase for methods and local variables,
two-character indentation, etc.), you can look at (most of :-) the
Ruby code in the standard library.  Also there's a good style guide
at:
http://pub.cozmixng.org/~the-rwiki/rw-cgi.rb?cmd=view;name=RubyCodingConvention
(not beyond dispute in every detail but very much in harmony with
traditional Ruby style).

Looking a bit at the code itself, I think there's a certain amount of
verbosity that you could cut down on -- and still be nice and clear
(which is an area where Ruby shines).  For example, you have this:

 	def counttabs(s)
 		answer = s.index(/[^\t]/)
 		answer = 0 if not answer
 		return answer
 	end

which could be:

    def counttabs(s)
      s.index(/[^\t]/) || 0
    end

(I'm not sure about the name -- it's not actually counting tabs -- but
I'll leave that to you :-)  Of course there's no imperative to make
things as short as they can be -- but one thing I like about Ruby is
that one's code tends to get more concise *and* to get more clear, as
one works on a project.


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net

"Ruby for Rails", forthcoming from Manning Publications, April 2006!