From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2006-07-30T18:20:14+09:00
Subject: Re: calling a method for an object in a .each block cont./ch


(late reply due to holidays)

william robb wrote:
> Thanks for the code.  I will have to digest the syntax a bit to see 
> exactly
> what you are doing here ... I had wondered what .freeze was good for.

It prevents changing of an object.  You probably found out by now...

irb(main):001:0> s="foo"
=> "foo"
irb(main):002:0> s.gsub! /./, 'x'
=> "xxx"
irb(main):003:0> s.freeze
=> "xxx"
irb(main):004:0> s.gsub! /./, 'y'
TypeError: can't modify frozen string
         from (irb):4:in `gsub!'
         from (irb):4
         from :0

> On that other topic, I think it was around V5 that turbo pascal became 
> OO.

Or even 5.5 - I'm not 100% sure.

> The first version was what made Borland a success, as it was a dirt 
> simple
> implementation of a real programming language, with one of the first 
> IDEs.  I still have the manual, complete, about the size of a paperback.

And the compiler was very fast because it was a one pass compiler (like 
all PASCAL compilers, it's made possible by the language's design).

> I do remember thinking, when I encountered Pascal's Record data type; "I 
> wish I could store a procedure in one of these fields ..."  People at 
> Borland must have
> thought that too, eh?

Maybe they even read your mind - or NSA trapped your phone. :-)

> Then came C, and Pascal kinda withered away ... Wasen't 'cool', but was 
> a good workhorse.

Personally I still find PASCAL a pretty good language for learning to 
program since it makes many things rather explicit.  IO of standard 
PASCAL is bad though.  MODULA was a complete disaster IMHO - good ideas 
but implemented awfully.  IIRC you needed to call a different IO 
function for every different basic data type - no polymorphism.

Kind regards

	robert