From: Joseph McDonald <joe@...>
Date: 2001-06-28T11:29:41+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16982] RCR for the String class


Hi,

What does everyone thing of this as an RCR to change the behavior of
the String class?

Basically, When I say
str = "Joe"
puts str[0]

I want it to print "J" not the ascii code for "J".  I think the need
to get the ascii code is much rarer then getting the actual character.
much rarer.  It seems pragmatic to change it.  Otherwise you have to
say:
puts str[0..0]
which is weird.

The other is, if I say:
s[2] = "seph likes ruby a lot"

It should print out:
Joseph likes ruby a lot.

Why should the programmer have to worry about getting the new strings
length?

In the spirit of Guy Decoux, I have a b.rb to sort of explain what I
am proposing:

joe@merry:~$ cat b.rb
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby

class BetterString < String

  def [] (*args)
    if (args.length == 1 and args[0].kind_of?Fixnum)
      super(args[0]..args[0])
    else
      super(*args)
    end
  end

  def []= (*args)
    if (args.length==2 and args[0].kind_of?Fixnum and args[1].kind_of?String)
      super(args[0], args[0]+args[1].length, args[1])
    else
      super(*args)
    end
  end
end

s = BetterString.new("please matz")
puts s[0]
puts s[0..5]
s[7] = "matz the great"
puts s

joe@merry:~$ ./b.rb
p
please
please matz the great

thanks,
-joe