From: Mark Slagell <ms@...>
Date: 2001-06-28T12:20:27+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16986] Re: RCR for the String class

David Alan Black wrote:
> 
> 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

There's also the [position,length] substring notation.  I've found this
pretty easy to get used to, as it's consistent whether you want one
character or several.

  str = "Joe"
  str[0,1]    #-> "J"
  str[0,2]    #-> "Jo"
  str[0,3]    #-> "Joe"

  -- Mark