From: Henrik Schmidt <nospam@...>
Date: 2006-09-21T01:20:08+09:00
Subject: Re: the point of omitting parentheses

ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Henrik Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I'm fairly new to Ruby, so bear with me. Anyway, on with the question.
>>
>> What is the benefit of being able to omit parentheses on a method 
>> call? IMHO, parentheses improves readability; I can instantly discern, 
>> whether something is a method call or a variable. It would seem to me, 
>> that readability is, at least, part of the reason for the @-prefix on 
>> instance variables, thus making it difficult for a human reader to 
>> confuse them with local variables. Why not force a similar convention 
>> on method calls, namely explicit parentheses?
>>
>> In addition, this feature allows you to do stuff like this:
>>
>> def foo
>>  42
>> end
>>
>> foo            # -> 42
>> foo = 1 if false
>> foo            # -> nil
>>
>> I generally like the language but dead code with side effects makes me 
>> nervous.
>>
>> Could anyone explain to me, why it's a good idea to have the option of 
>> omitting parentheses on a method call?
> 
> exit
> raise
> fail
> fork
> gets
> map{|no_paren| no_paren}
> string.to_i
> class.new
> alias_method
> public
> private
> protected
> 
> etc.
> 
> 
> -a

Wow, public, private and protected are actually method call. I wonder 
how they implemented that. Now I HAVE to get the source code. :)

Best Regards,
   Henrik Schmidt