From: Daniel Schierbeck <daniel.schierbeck@...>
Date: 2005-12-09T00:03:14+09:00
Subject: Re: They say I write Ruby like Perl

On Wednesday 07 December 2005 09:13 pm, 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?

Notice that I've substituted your tabs with two spaces and that I've 
changed you method names to lower_case instead of camelCase

 > class Node < Object
No need to write `< Object', since all objects inherit from Object

 > super()
You don't need the parantheses

 > @parent = nil
 > @prevsibling = nil
 > @nextsibling = nil
 > @firstchild = nil
 > @lastchild = nil
Variables are created when they're first referenced, and are `nil' by 
default, so these lines make no difference.

 > attr_reader :name, :type, :value
 > attr_writer :name, :type, :value
This will do the same:
   attr_accessor :name, :type, :value

 > def setAttributes(attribs) @attribs = attribs; end
 > def getAttributes() return @attribs; end
This will do the same:
   attr_accessor :attribs

 > def hasAttributes() return @attribs != nil; end
   def has_attribs?
     # Hash#empty? returns true if the hash has no elements
     not @attribs.empty?
   end

 > def setAttribute(key, value) @attribs[key] = value; end
 > def getAttribute(key) return @attribs[key]; end
   def []=(key, value)
     @attribs[key] = value
   end

   def [](key)
     @attribs[key]
   end

 > def hasAttribute(key) return @attribs[key] != nil; end
   def has_attrib?(key)
     @attribs.has_key? key
   end


That's just some of the things though.

Cheers,
Daniel