From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2006-09-21T16:20:06+09:00
Subject: Re: The default array print format

Bart Braem <bart.braem@gmail.com> wrote:
> Robert Klemme wrote:
>
>> Granted, the version using to_s is certainly questionable but the
>> other two alternatives (especially p, which uses #inspect
>> internally) are pretty clear, aren't they?
>
> They sure are, but some projects, in this case Rails, seem to use the
> to_s method.

I have no insight at which exact point it does this.  But I guess you can 
change that, or explicitly invoke another method.

> And I don't understand why that remove-all-spaces
> approach is chosen.

Probably because it is not a "remove all spaces" approach: there are no 
spaces in an array, Array#to_s just appends string representations of all 
its elements.  It's like Array#join called without arguments (or with an 
empty string as argument). :-)

> But perhaps there are good reasons for this, I'm
> not a longtime ruby user so I just wonder.

My guess at the reasoning behind this goes like this: to_s does the simplest 
thing possible (i.e. converting all elements to string via their #to_s and 
then concatenate them).  If the user wants something more fancy, she has to 
explicitly use another method, e.g. join with an argument that denotes the 
string that is inserted in between.

> Thanks for your explanation
> Bart

You're welcome!

Kind regards

    robert