From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-08-24T11:01:26+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20231] Re: ++ Operator

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:20207] Re: ++ Operator"
    on 01/08/24, Lars Christensen <larsch@cs.auc.dk> writes:

|> "++" in C/C++ is fundamentally an assignment, or in other words, an
|> operation on variable not object, so that it would not fit well in
|> object-oriented model.  Try "i+=1" instead.
|
|I don't think of ++ as an assignment, as much as a "modification" to what
|it is used one. Having written much C and C++ code, the +, += and
|"missing" ++ operators semantics in Ruby are hard for me to accept.
|
|This is how I would have done it:
|
|---
|
|+= should be a method, not an operator. It modifies the object using
|addition or appending. Lot of methods in ruby already modify their object.
|
|    a = b = 2
|    a += 2
|    a  # => 4
|    b  # => 4

Ah, so you want integers to be mutable?  And it may result

     p 2 # => 4??

Is this what you want?  I don't agree.

  (a) making numbers mutable is plain confusing.

  (b) in addition, it prohibits immediate numbers (as in Smalltalk, or
      current Ruby), number preallocation (as in Python), etc. as a
      result, it may be performance penalty.

							matz.