From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-06-04T04:45:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Introducing the "it" keyword

On 03.06.2007 19:34, Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 2 Jun 2007, at 01:09, Chad Perrin wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 10:45:33PM +0900, Jacob Burkhart wrote:
>>>
>>> return it if with:it(v+1) < 10
>>>
>>> Would be translated by the interpreter into exactly the same thing as 
>>> this:
>>>
>>> with:it(v+1) do
>>>   return it if it < 10
>>> end
>>>
>>> which is exactly the same thing as this:
>>>
>>> with(v+1) do |it|
>>>   return it if it < 10
>>> end
>>
>> Yes . . . I was just pointing out that, of those, the third is the only
>> one that really seems particularly readable to me in a Ruby context.
>>
>> Something about with:it(v+1) just doesn't look very readable to me.  It
>> might have something to do with the lack of space separating tokens, but
>> I'm pretty sure that's not all there is to it.
> 
> I tend to agree, although that's because I'd really like Ruby to have 
> the 'with' syntactic sugar that VB has. I also much prefer the idea of 
> being able to choose my own block variable name rather than being stuck 
> with 'it' which to my eye is an ungainly word. It still bothers me 
> though that a formulation that's intended to make for a simple atomic 
> statement would now cover three lines onscreen...

I believe Ruby does not have "with" because there is instance_eval - 
it's more to type but can be easily aliased and has the same effect - 
rebinding "self".  (I know that some talk about another "with", that 
rebinds arbitrary variable names.  But I believe the original idea of 
"with" was, that you could invoke methods without explicit receiver).

Kind regards

	robert