From: Lyle Johnson <ljohnson@...>
Date: 2001-08-17T01:56:05+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19910] Re: The GUI poll is in, and the resultsaresurprising

> > > If some future version of Ruby supports keyword arguments, the
situation
> > > will be even better.
> >
> > Great! By why keep the arguments if you can do without them. When you
use
> > them, the expression becomes unreadable. You still won't be able to
> > remember with the 5th argument was about. The only exception is the use
of
> > named arguments (by symbol or string, which is possible with today's
> > ruby!):
>
> When Lyle said "keyword arguments" he meant the same as you mean
> by "named arguments."

I think Lars was talking about collecting leftover arguments in a hash (thus
the "key => value" syntax). You can do this in Ruby/Tk, among others. What
I'm holding out for is keyword arguments like Python's, e.g.

    def some_function(a, b=2, c=3, d=4)
        a + b + c + d
    end

    some_function(52, c=4, d=3)

Lyle