From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2001-06-28T11:46:01+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16984] Re: RCR for the String class

Hello --

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Joseph McDonald wrote:

> 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.

You can do this:

  puts str[0].chr

I don't know the rationale for the code rather than character
behavior, but perhaps someone who does will comment on it.  I agree
that it seems slightly unexpected, but I imagine there's a history to
it that would make sense of it.  (Or maybe there's a future to it --
something to do with extended character sets?)

> The other is, if I say:
> s[2] = "seph likes ruby a lot"
>
> It should print out:
> Joseph likes ruby a lot.

It does, doesn't it?

  irb 1> str = "Joe"
     ==>"Joe"
  irb 2> str[2] = "seph likes ruby a lot."
     ==>"seph likes ruby a lot."
  irb 3> str
     ==>"Joseph likes ruby a lot."


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav