From: Thomas Adam <thomas.adam22@...>
Date: 2006-09-22T00:05:57+09:00
Subject: Re: the point of omitting parentheses

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 23:52:03 +0900
"Wilson Bilkovich" <wilsonb@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/21/06, devdev <adeveloper.google@elitefrontier.com> wrote:
> > The point of being able to omit parentheses is to make it easier to
> > write Domain Specific Languages (DSLs).The lack of parentheses
> > makes it easier to create DLSs that consist of declared syntaxes or
> > grammars, but have the DSL itself still be pure Ruby. Also by
> > parentheses being optional, we can create a DSL for Ruby itself, in
> > effect creating constructs which look and act like reserve word
> > extensions to Ruby.
> 
> I would say that that's this year's 'point'.  For me, I just think
> that they are ugly.
> 
> I only use them in two places, personally:
> 1. When the left-hand side of a ternary starts to look scary:
> x = (foo == baz.something) ? this : the_other
> 
> 2. Method definitions, since I find they draw the eye better than
> without. def thingy x, y, *z, &block  vs. def thingy(x, y, *z, &block)

Like everyone else who has replied to this thread -- they're either
explicitly stated or alluded to the fact that it's purely a matter of
choice.  

For me, it's useful to fit my mindset as to what makes things clearer
for me.  For years, I have been using Java, and I *do* find the use of
parenthesis around method calls useful in Ruby to make me realise
what's going on.  But it's just choice.

When you consider things like:

require 'foo'
attr_reader :myvar

Those dictate properties if you will of the class, so not adding
parenthesis around them makes sense, despite them being methods in
their own right.

-- Thomas Adam