From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2006-07-16T01:10:05+09:00
Subject: Re: About MyClass#my_method


dblack@wobblini.net wrote:
> Hi --
>
> On Sat, 15 Jul 2006, Jonas Pfenniger wrote:
>
> > On 14/07/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:
> >> > I know but other characters are used differently in various
> >> > circumstances. For example {} is for a hash or a block depending where
> >> > it is in the code.
> >>
> >> OK, then let me put it differently: repurposing comment syntax is a
> >> bad idea :-)  I really think that comments are important enough that
> >> they deserve a completely unchallenged syntax.  (I know about "#{}".
> >> I consider the quotation marks a mitigating factor: "#" wouldn't be a
> >> comment anyway.)
> >
> > Yeah your point is really valid :-) Nonetheless, how often do you
> > think that there is a def keywork, a class and right after, with no
> > space, a # with some comment  in all the project's ruby code ? I guess
> > not that much.
>
> It doesn't matter.  There's no time limit: comments should have their
> own syntactic space, forever, whether people use them for a particular
> purpose or not.
>
> >> > class Test end
> >> > def Test::LibPath; "." end
> >> > Test::LibPath = File.dirname(__FILE__)
> >> >
> >> > Test::LibPath would always give the dirname of __FILE__. But in that
> >> > case you could use Test.method(:LibPath)
> >>
> >> So you'd have to know whether there was a method of the same name...
> >> which I think is very fragile.
> >
> > I don't know. A method access (in contrary to method call) is already
> > pretty specific, plus camel cases methods are also pretty specific. If
> > you do something like this, you would take care isn't it ? But again,
> > it's just an idea. I'm pretty sure it will not be adopted but I like
> > to discuss about it :-)
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "specific" -- I'm thinking of a case
> where I said:
>
>    Something::Whatever
>
> thinking I would get a method object, but in the Something module
> there was a Whatever constant.  I don't want to have to check all the
> constant and method names dynamically to find out.

But I would think this would be sufficient in the cases of capitalized
methods:

    Something::Whatever()

Personaly I find the whole notation Class#method pretty poor since it
can't be used in the langauge itself. I mean, I've gotten used to it,
but that doesn't change the fact. And if comments are a problem with
implementation then maybe we should have a better notation. But that
means a seachange and   so when you way the options, I think requiring
a space before an in line comment isn;t so bad --after all were about
to require a space for hash symbol key notation with symbol values.

T.