From: Sean Russell <ser@...>
Date: 2001-11-14T08:52:03+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:25107] Re: REXML behavior change RFC

Sean Chittenden wrote:

> Why not overload to_s so that it returns the first element, then
> overload to_a so that it'll return an array?  If you know your data
> and know you only want one element, having it short-circuit the search
> is a Good Thing(TM) for performance.  ;~) -sc

Thanks, Sean.

to_s currently returns the XML subtree, written out.  EG:

a = Element.new("a")
a.add_element "b"
a.to_s                 # -> "<a><b/></a>"

to_a returns all of the children.  Although it would be pretty easy to 
allow passing to_a an argument which is an XPath, this has the same problem 
as passing each() an XPath, in that to_a doesn't normally take arguments 
(in other core Ruby classes).

-- 
--- SER