From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2001-07-13T04:37:44+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:17745] Re: Array#sort! returns nil when array empty

> I'm now thinking that perhaps the "right" way to do this
> is:
>
>     foo.gsub('foo','bar').gsub!(' ',"\t")
>
> i.e., the earlier chained methods are non-bang.
>
> I'll try this line of thought for a while.
>
> Hal

Well, this does not achieve the desired result:

    foo = "This is a test"               #=> "This is a test"
    foo.gsub('foo,'bar').gsub!(' ',"\t") #=> "This\tis\tb\ttest"
    foo                                  #=> "This is a test"

What we really want is:

    foo = "This is a test"               #=> "This is a test"
    foo.gsub!('foo',bar')                #=> nil
    foo.gsub!(' ',"\t")                  #=> "This\tis\ta\ttest"
    foo                                  #=> "This\tis\ta\ttest"

Paul