From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2001-07-24T02:13:17+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:18360] Re: Newbie question: Data structures in Ruby.

Erik <recon_nospam@dds.nl> writes:

> > > currentpage.articles[2].elements[5].content = 'Hello world'
> > >
> > > I am not sure if or how I can realise this, could somebody
> > > please give me a hint?
> >
> > You could use the wonderful new PerlValue package (available on the
> > RAA)
> 
> Thank you for your help, but do I really need a module to do
> something simple as this?

No.

> 
> As the module name suggests, it kind of emulates Perl for this feature.
> Isn't there an obvious Ruby kind of way to do this?

Yes, but the way you wrote the original code was so reminiscent of the
way you'd do it in Perl, I wrongly assumed a Perl-like solution would
be convenient for you.

Personally, I'd implement a Container class that gave me the
application specific functionality I needed, and then have Page,
articles, element either subclass or delegate to this. That way, I'd
insulate myself from the underlying implementation, which would seem
to me more flexible. I could store data in arrays, on disk, or in a
database and nothing would change. The Ruby delegation library is
wonderful for constructing this kind of thing.


Regards


Dave