From: Claudio Jeker <cjeker@...>
Date: 2006-02-09T00:25:58+09:00
Subject: boolean annoyance

Hello,

there is one thing in ruby that annoys me most (at least for now).

if 0
	puts "true"
end

Yes, I know everything expect nil and false are true but that's probably
the most illogic part of ruby. Because of this stuff like

if flags & 0x01
	# do some stuff if flag is set
end

will execute in any case. Perhaps I'm biased because I'm a crazy C hacker
but I can not believe that others do not fall into this trap. I realy like
the clearness of the ruby syntax but this "everything but nil and false is
true" logic is totaly non obvious and annoying.

Why can't there be a to_bool converter for all numerical Classes?
This converter could be used in boolean expressions, 0.to_bool would
return false and all other numbers would return true.
Probably the best way is to extend the Object class where to_bool would
return true. Subclasses may than overload to_bool with a more complex
version. This makes it possible to use .to_bool everywhere where a boolean
expression is expected.

IMO if it looks like a boolean expression it should act like a boolean
expression.
-- 
:wq Claudio