From: Guillaume Cottenceau <gc@...>
Date: 2001-08-07T02:02:06+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19235] Re: ANN: Code Amelioration Contest (presented by Ruby Conference 2001)

Dave Thomas <Dave@PragmaticProgrammer.com> writes:


[...]

> > > Anyway, I propose that instead of improving arbitary code, the contest
> > > should aim to improve cookbook code.
> 
> If Guillaume is amenable, then I think that's a great idea.

Of course, I think this is great! 

Again, I just want to underline that in some cases, I may refuse the
"improvement" if I feel that it obfuscates the code, considering intended
readers mostly not Ruby Gurus; of course, much of existing code probably
deserves a look from a Ruby specialist.


[...]

> > For example, in @@PLEAC@@_1.6 we have the following:
> > 
> > irb(main):009:0> long_palindromes = IO.readlines("/usr/share/dict/words").
> >                    select { |w| w.chomp!; w.reverse == w && w.length > 5 }
> > ["redder", "reviver", "rotator"]
> > 
> > 
> > This could be considered as "better" than using File.open("..").readlines
> > because there is one method call less, and it doesn't get obfuscated.
> 
> Now, I'm not saying that this is an improvement, but 'readlines' reads the
> whole file in before processing. Could we make use of the fact that IO
> is Enumerable?
> 
>  File.open(/usr/share/dict/words").select { ... }
> 
> Yup - that runs about 30% faster on my box.

And is still very clear. I'm patching with that, thanks ;p.

 
> I'm thinking that part of the Amelioration process is trying to come
> up with a 'Ruby style', which to me involves the use of some of the
> more functional-style idioms. The fact that File is Enumerable is
> actually a very neat thing in Ruby.

Yep.

(to me, Ruby style also implies use of iterators; also, use of OO
"pointed" notation rather than what's you can read in Perl in the
Cookbook, e.g. obj.collect {}  <=>  map {} obj)


-- 
Guillaume Cottenceau - http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~gc/