From: Chris Alfeld <chris.alfeld@...>
Date: 2006-03-29T01:20:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Why do some methods names which replace the content in place doesn't have the "!" sign?

I'm working on a program that indexes semilarge amounts of data in
various ways.  Now it can be argued that if I care about performance I
shouldn't use ruby, but I do care and I am using.  One of my classes
has a query method:

  def query(q)
    ...
  end

From a high level semantics point of view query is very much a read
only function.  It takes a string, interprets it in certain ways, and
reports the results.

However, with how my application is used, successive queries tend to
be related.  So, under the hood there is a great deal of caching going
on; various instance variables are being changed.  It would be
extremely counter intuitive to the user if I had to name my routine
query!.

My point (which no doubt had been made) is that it is difficult for a
parser to determine the higher level semantics of a routine.  This is
especially true in a language as dynamic as ruby.

c.