From: Giles Bowkett <gilesb@...>
Date: 2006-05-16T05:43:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Struct.new vs class

On 5/15/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Giles Bowkett <gilesb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > is "*a" basically a keyword args flag that tells initialize() to take
> > any and all args and just pass them up the chain to super()?
>
> Except that it isn't keyword args. I like David Black's name for it:
> the (un)array operator.

I might have been thinking of a Python term...

> It's an unary non-overridable operator on
> arrays. When used on an array as a receiver, it indicates that it will
> take a list of items and treat them as an array; when used on a sender
> array, it splits that array out into a list:
>
>   >> a = %w(a b c d e)
>   => ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"]
>   >> b, c, *d = *a
>   => ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"]
>   >> p a, b, c, d
>   ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"] # a
>   "a" # b
>   "b" # c
>   ["c", "d", "e"] # d

so when you feed it to initialize() like that, it translates the list
it's been given into an array and then initialize() picks that up and
says "oh, ok, this is the sequence of args I'm expecting"?

and you could also do

def initialize (*arbitrarily_long_name)
end

?

-- 
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org