From: Sean Chittenden <sean@...>
Date: 2001-11-14T09:40:46+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:25123] Re: REXML behavior change RFC

> > 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.

Err...  you'll have to forgive my brain-o's below:

> to_s currently returns the XML subtree, written out.  EG:
> 
> a = Element.new("a")
> a.add_element "b"
> a.to_s                 # -> "<a><b/></a>"

How about having a method like:

	a.xpath("/foo/bar") ->  XPath object w/ search loaded

that returns an XPath object that has to_s and to_a overloaded (small
wrapper around the Element class that only has to_s and to_a
overloaded).  When to_s or to_a is called, then it performs the
search/scan of the document.

> 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).