From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-06-06T12:29:29+09:00
Subject: Re: An alternative to the class Foo < Struct.new(vars) idiom and SuperStruct


On Jun 5, 2006, at 5:59 PM, Steven Lumos wrote:

> Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@gmail.com> writes:
>> This is why I kind of like how in Perl => is just a synonym for comma
>> (it is in ruby too, at least for Hash literals, the problem being
>> that it forces a hash literal). then
>
> I stopped using Perl when I started using Ruby, but I seem to recall
> that => in Perl does more than comma.  E.g. {a => 1, b => 2} is mostly
> equivalent to {'a', 1, 'b', 2}.
>
> Ruby doesn't do the magic quoting.
>
> Steve
>
>

True, but in perl you have to "force" the evaluation of variables  
anyway. => auto-quoting only works for barewords (\w+), as soon as  
you do something like "Hello, world" => 1 it's exactly the same as  
"Hello, world", 1

Whether or not it turns into a hash or an array is of course  
dependant on the left-hand side.

%hash = ( "a" => 1 );
@array = ( "a" => 1 );

Which I think may as well be equivalent to ruby's

{ "a" => 1 }
[ "a" => 1 ]

But (un?)fortunately they are not.

[ "a" => 1 ] in ruby is [ { "a" => 1 } ]

In fact in ruby => isn't equiv to comma, it's more like comma is  
equiv to => when surrounded by { }.

Getting way off topic here.