From: Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...>
Date: 2007-07-10T04:08:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Syntax sugar: method[](...) => method(...)


On Jun 30, 2007, at 3:18 AM, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> In message "Re: Syntax sugar: method[](...) => method(...)"
>     on Sat, 30 Jun 2007 05:17:27 +0900, "Erwin Abbott"  
> <erwin.abbott@gmail.com> writes:
>
> |Lastly, has there been any mention of allowing function names like so
> |in ruby 1.9:
> |  def logins[] date
> |    # ...
> |  end
>
> It is quite difficult since
>
>   obj.login[date]
>
> would be ambiguous.  We have no way to tell the method name to be
> "login[]" or "login".

I've wished for the functionality the OP suggested but I understand that
there really isn't much wiggle room in the current Ruby syntax.

This would probably be a headache from a parsing perspective but what  
about
something like:

    obj.login@[date]

which would be interpreted as calling the method named 'login@[]'.
This is suggestive of the Eiffel array indexing syntax but with the  
square
brackets to avoid any ambiguity with instance variables.


Gary Wright