From: Adriano Ferreira <a.r.ferreira@...>
Date: 2006-01-13T20:26:47+09:00
Subject: Re: ABS |ruby|

On 1/13/06, Alex Combas <alex.combas@gmail.com> wrote:
> In math the absolute value is typically
> the double pipe:
> |x| = 27
>
> This reminds me stuff like:
> Stuff.each { |x| puts 'hello '+x }
>
> Are these two related in any way?

IIRC, the block syntax in Ruby is reminiscent to Smalltalk syntax,
which used blocks like this:

[ :x | Transcript show: 'hello ', x ]      "the equivalent of Ruby
block { |x| puts 'hello '+x }"

and used | vars | to declare some temporary variables in a piece of code.

| x y |
^ x + y

Square brackets are not square anymore (as they are used in Ruby for
indexing purposes - C inheritance). The odd variable names with
markers (:x) were replaced by the delimited block of names (| x |) and
voil�.

Regards,
Adriano.