From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2006-03-23T00:13:51+09:00
Subject: Re: questions/suggestions from a Ruby newbie

Diego.Virasoro@gmail.com wrote:
> -Fortran 95 had a really nice feature when using arrays: you could
> assign values using ranges. I am glad to see something similar exist in
> Ruby too, (eg. variable[0..100]=0)
> However F95 went a bit further, since the ranges could include an
> optional parameter, the step. In F95 it would look something like:
> variable[min:max:step] = 0
> There's a lot of cases when something like this is really convinient. I
> know you can produce a similar effect using a few more lines, but I
> think a feature like a range+step would have several advantages, namely
> that it would look more clear in less code (a common feature in Ruby)
> and it's closer to the way we think to be very desirable. Has there
> been any talk about such a feature in future Ruby?

Not that I heard of.  It doesn't sound like it was too difficult to 
implement though.

> -What is the difference between the << and + concatenation for strings?
> Is it just that the former modifies the string while the second one
> returns a new string? 

Right.

 > Why then not use something like +!  (just as an
> alternative)?

That's ugly IMHO and also just syntax.  "<<" is well known in other 
languages (namely C++) for stream appending which is basically what it 
is.  Also operator "+!" might introduce problems in the syntax.

Kind regards

	robert