From: Florian Frank <flori@...>
Date: 2006-10-03T05:43:01+09:00
Subject: Re: redefining splat?

Brian Mitchell wrote:
> On 10/2/06, Florian Frank <flori@nixe.ping.de> wrote:
>> Jeremy Kemper wrote:
>> > You can define to_ary which splat uses. In Ruby 1.9 you can define
>> > to_splat
>> You mean #to_a?
>
Well, #to_ary expresses a bit more than just splatability (is this even 
a word?). It means that the Object is in some way actually an Array, not 
only that it can be converted into an array if needed. A good example 
for this is Pathname#to_str.

So, you don't have to use the splat operator at all, if you want to 
print a class that implements #to_ary, e. g.:

 >> class A;def to_ary;[:foo,:bar];end;end
# => nil
 >> puts A.new
foo
bar

This is different from:

 >> class B;def to_a;[:foo,:bar];end;end
# => nil
 >> puts *B.new
foo
bar
 >> puts B.new
#<B:0xb7a8d114>

-- 
Florian Frank