From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2006-10-21T09:04:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Array#to_s in Ruby 1.9 Head

Ross Bamford wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-10-20 at 06:34 +0900, gwtmp01@mac.com wrote:
>> Mauricio Fernandez writes in http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?Changes+in 
>> +Ruby+1.9+update+5
>> that Ruby 1.9 Head has changed Array#to_s to be an alias for  
>> Array#to_inspect.
>>
>> What is the motivation for that change?
>> 	print a
>> becomes
>> 	a.each { |x| print x }
>>
>> It seems like an unnecessary change that takes away a very nice  
>> default behavior.
> 
> FWIW I find I need 'puts ary.inspect' much more often than 'puts ary',
> so I think this is a good change.

(Why 'puts ary.inspect' instead of 'p ary' ?)

I suspect there is a fair amount of code that depends on

   print a

being the same as

   print *a

This would be the case if you are thinking of an array of strings as an
array of lines. For example, if you are writing a method whose input, a,
is the contents of a text file _either_ as a string _or_ as an array of 
lines, then

   print a

has the same behavior on all inputs.

With the change in Array#to_a, you don't have this nice duck-typing, but 
you get it back if you use splat:

   print *a

(that works when a is a string, at least in 1.8.4)

I'm not against the change, just thinking about damage control.

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407