From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2006-07-21T20:44:47+09:00
Subject: Re: opacity of magic enumerator (was: Re: Using .each with constructors)

On 7/21/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 21 Jul 2006, Logan Capaldo wrote:
> >
> > irb(main):001:0> RUBY_VERSION
> > => "1.9.0"
> > irb(main):002:0> a, b, c = 3.times.map { Object.new }
> > => [#<Object:0x2382c8>, #<Object:0x2381d8>, #<Object:0x238070>]
>
> Interesting....  That reveals that one of the problems with this magic
> enumerator thing is that the method names weren't necessarily chosen
> with this in mind, and don't work very well.  3.times.map very
> strongly does *not* communicate a 0...3 mapping to me.  My first

If you think about it, though, the underlying problem is that 3.times
passes a parameter into the block, which is what makes 3.times.map
{|i| } nonintuitive. The plain 3.times.map {} doesn't suggest a 0...3
mapping, but rather an enumerator consisting of three "passes" which
map naturally turns into a 3-object array. I predict that this *will*
seem intuitive once magic enumerators have been around a while - note
that it already reads perfectly as 3.times.collect

martin