From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2000-03-24T12:23:48-06:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:02141] Re: ARGF vs. $<

schneik@us.ibm.com writes:

> Matz wrote:
> >     on 00/03/23, Dave Thomas <Dave@thomases.com> writes:
> >
> > |Apart from the naming convention, is there a reason that ARGF is
> > |documented as a global constant and $< as a global variable? They both
> > |reference the same object, and effectively have the same semantics. Am
> > |I missing something subtle here?
> >
> > They are same in semantics, but syntactically, $< is a read-only
> > special variable, and ARGF is a constant.  In reference manual, I
> > cannot ignore syntactical difference.
> 
> I don't know if Dave also wants to include the following in his
> documentation, but in English.rb there is also:
> 
>     alias $DEFAULT_INPUT           $<

I'm documenting English.rb in the section on library files, although
matz dislikes it as a Perl-ism ;-) However, I'd forgotten to cross
reference that from my (overly long) table of predefined variables, so 
thanks for the timely reminder.


Dave