From: Vidar Hokstad <vidar.hokstad@...>
Date: 2006-12-22T02:10:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Method named ***(other)


Julien Gaugaz wrote:
> Ah, ok, thanks a lot. I understood why i could use '***' as an infix
> operator. But still, there shouldn't be any difference between a call
> like m.*** n  and m.triple_star n... But it seems there is since
> m.triple_star works and m.*** don't.
>
> I don't get it.

Again, the only reason you can use a name like '**' is that it's one of
the predefined operators. You can't just use any characters you want in
a method name - the only method names you can use "special" characters
like '*' in are method names matching the specific operators you can
override.

I think your confusion probably stems from the fact that this parses
without errors:

  def *** other
  end

Hower, try to run this:

  class Foo
      def *** other
      end
  end

  p Foo.new.methods.sort

This should print out a sorted list of methods of instances of Foo.
You'll see "**" shows up as the first method. The reason is that "def
*** other" gets parsed as "def **  *other" (note the space). "*" in
this case is the "splat" operator, that indicates that "other" will
hold an arbitrary number of arguments in an array.

So you haven't defined Foo#***, but Foo#**.

Vidar


Vidar