From: Simen Edvardsen <toalett@...>
Date: 2007-07-09T09:32:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Yield should be renamed call_block

On 7/9/07, Simen Edvardsen <toalett@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/9/07, Bharat Ruparel <bruparel@mercury.com> wrote:
> > One of the virtues of the Ruby language that is touted by just about
> > everyone including the language designer Matz is that it is supposedly
> > very intuitive, follows principle of least surprise, duck typing and on
> > and on.
> > I find it fascinating and quite a bit true.  However, I have to always
> > mentally translate the keyword "yeild" to mean "call_block".  I find
> > that it is the biggest distraction that I have when I am trying to
> > figure out what and how a a method with a block and calling code
> > interact.  I can understand all that baggage such as "lambda" function
> > name from Lisp and the wonderful "$" variables that came from Perl, but
> > where did the keyword yeild come from?
>
> Intuivitely, a function yields its hold of the Vm/interpreter to its
> caller. "Yield" is also used in some cooperative-threading
> implementations, in which a thread yields control to the scheduler. I
> don't think the name is unintuitive at all. Besides, keywords should
> be short, conscise, and why in the name of the Language Designer gods
> should there be an underscore in a keyword?!
>
>  And why has not anyone aske Matz
> > to consider changing it to infinitely more obvious "call_block"?  It it
> > that big a deal?  In an open source language?
> >
>
> No, it's not. You're free to change the language so that "yield"
> becomes "call_block" and release your own version. I don't think it
> requires much tweaking.  But I guess you'll be the only user, so why
> bother?
>
> > --
> > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> - Simen
>

"Intuivitely, a function yields its hold of the Vm/interpreter to its
caller." should be "Intuivitely, a function yields its hold of the
Vm/interpreter to its
block", of course.

-- 
- Simen