From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-04-01T00:21:22+09:00
Subject: Re: TrueClass/FalseClass vs. Boolean

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006, Christian Neukirchen wrote:

> "baumanj@gmail.com" <baumanj@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Since everything in ruby is an object, there need to be objects for
>> representing true and false. Once you have those, why do you need a
>> Boolean class?
>
> if a.kind_of? Boolean
>
> case y
>  when Integer
>  when Boolean
> end
>
> I often wanted this shortcut...

indeed.  i tend to use

   case obj
     when Klass
     when TrueClass, FalseClass
   end

which is ugly.

another thing a real Boolean class could give is a 'maybe' obj such that

     maybe or true                   -> maybe
     maybe or true and false or true -> maybe
     maybe and false                 -> maybe

although i can't think of anything attm to do with this it would undoubtably
lead to some nice logical constructs that more closely parallel the way we
think.

i've brought this up once or twice before - maybe we should just put together
a patch and send to ruby-core?

regards.


-a
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