From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-03-09T03:38:04+09:00
Subject: Re: A couple of questions from a Ruby neophyte

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 09:27:01PM +0900, Alex Young wrote:
> 
> >- A language with a flexible array or array-like object. One of the
> >things I love about PHP is the ease with which an array can be
> >populated (eg "MyArray[] = 'a new value';" adds "a new value" as a new
> >item to the array MyArray).
> Ruby's arrays aren't quite as feature-packed as PHP's arrays, which are 
> more like mutant hashes with strange super-powers.  A Ruby array is 
> created like this:

The only quibble I have with your post is the above characterization of
PHP's array variables.  It's more accurate, I think, to say that by
failing to more carefully separate normal arrays and associative arrays
(hashes) from each other, PHP ends up merely pretending to have two
array types while in fact it only has one -- and it's pretty broken in
some annoying ways.  The problems with PHP arrays are mostly in
secondary effects, such that the way they're implemented imposes
limitations on the language as a whole, even though looking at the
arrays in a vacuum they don't seem terribly broken at first glance.

PHP handling of arrays isn't really something I've put too much thought
into analyzing, so I'm afraid I can't come up with a succinct
description of my objections to how they work just yet, but suffice to
say that despite the atrocious syntactic gyrations needed to deal with
complex data structures in Perl thanks to the list-flattening problem I
still prefer working with complex data structures in Perl over working
with them in PHP.  I think your uses of the terms "mutant" and "strange"
are appropriate to describing PHP arrays, but "super-powers" is a bit
less so, and "feature-packed" is only useful to describe PHP arrays
where "feature" is contrasted with "useful functionality".

Because of its design -- and the way arrays work is a decent
demonstration of this fact -- PHP's usefulness as you get beyond simple
templating development drops off significantly.  The more complex the
language gets, the more acrobatic your work-arounds must become.


> 
> arr << 'c'

This is a beautiful example of where Ruby handles arrays better than PHP
handles them.  Doing it the PHP way:

  $arr = 'c'

. . . is confusing and limiting.  It hinders code readability and
maintainability, and restricts the potential uses of the assignment
operator outside of appending values to an array by essentially
overloading the operator haphazardly.


> 
> >
> >- A language with strong Regular Expression abilities, and string
> >manipulation tools / methods.
> Yup.  Better than PHP's, in my opinion.

Far, far better than PHP's.  In the quartet of commonly cited web
scripting languages (Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby), PHP's regular
expression handling is by far the worst.  It's kludgy, inconsistent, and
unwieldy.  I try to avoid it.  I don't like Python's much either, but
it's a darn sight better than PHP's.

I think I've been spoiled by working primarily with Perl regexen.  PHP's
regex handling is actually better than that of probably 90% of languages
that have regexen at all.  I just think you need to be in about the 98th
percentile before you get to the languages that actually have *good*
regex support, and Ruby is definitely in that category.


> 
> >So, would anyone be able to help me work out if Ruby is the language I
> >need?
> I guess the thing to do would be to find a simple task you need to do, 
> and actually try it out, and see how it feels - and check back here if 
> you need help.  That's how I got hooked :-)

That's a pretty good take on it.

The languages I'd suggest, off the top of my head, for the tasks
mentioned here include:

  Perl
  Python
  Ruby

Each has its benefits and detriments, of course.  I personally am not a
fan of Python, but it's still a great language in (most of) the ways
that matter.  Ruby's my favorite, by a long shot, for OOP.  Perl may
provide the most comfortable syntax for people who like a unixlike
environment (including me).  All three of them handle the needs outlined
in the original post of this thread admirably.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could actually
spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game." - Marvin Minsky