From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2001-06-28T22:49:00+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:17007] Re: RCR for the String class

> I don't know the rationale for the code rather than character
> behavior, but perhaps someone who does will comment on it.  I agree

Well, I'm not certain what the exact reason is, but in C, a char *is* an
integer, but with a smaller range than an int.  In Ruby, it is the same
way.  If you ask for "foo"[0] then you get the character ?f.  Since ?f is
really just an integer, though, printing it out gives you a number.

In C++, in order for cout << 'f' to print a letter, there is a distinction
between a char and an int.  It would be possible to make this distinction
in Ruby and have a Character type that is basically just a Fixnum with
to_s defined differently.  But then there is the problem of what do you
get with the following:

puts ?A + ?A
puts ?A + 1
puts ?A + 65000
puts ?A * 2

Here, ?A returns a Character and is the same as "A"[0].  In each of these
cases, should the result be printed as a character or as an integer?

Paul