From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2001-08-17T03:10:59+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19911] Re: Keyword args (was: The GUI poll is in, and the resultsaresurprising)

----- Original Message -----
From: Lyle Johnson <ljohnson@resgen.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>; <undisclosed-recipients: ;>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 11:56 AM
Subject: [ruby-talk:19910] Re: The GUI poll is in, and the
resultsaresurprising


> > 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)

But whatever the syntax, Ruby is going to have keyword
arguments... so we won't have to use the hash workaround.
They will be similar to Python's, unless I am missing
something.

Of course, Python doesn't allow an assignment to return
a value (does it?). So this will be a problem for us...

In Ruby, a call like some_func(x=5) means "assign 5 to
x, and pass that value 5 into some_func." So we need a
different syntax, I think...

Hal