From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-07-15T08:40:10+09:00
Subject: Re: gets

On 15.07.2007 00:52, Robert Dober wrote:
> On 7/14/07, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 09:16:35PM +0900, Robert Dober wrote:
> 
>> I wasn't even aware that "foo = gets; foo.chomp!" would be more efficient
>> than "foo = gets.chomp" -- that's news to me, and I'm not sure I get why
>> that should be the case at the moment.
> 
> My bad, I thought it was
> foo = foo.chomp vs. foo.chomp!
> sorry

Actually you can have

foo = gets.chomp

as well as

foo = gets
foo.chomp!

as well as

foo = gets.chomp!

I usually do

ARGF.each do |line|
   line.chomp!
   ...
end

Which probably also explains why I use chomp!. :-)

With regard to premature optimization: I just made it a habit to use 
chomp! in this case because I dislike creating an object that is 
immediately thrown away when I can avoid it easily.  I'm not religious 
here - it's just my personal rule of thumb.  As I said "inplace 
modification" is nothing special, it's just the normal OO way of doing 
things: object state changes.  Maybe people tend to forget that String 
and Fixnum are objects just like any other object (ok Fixnum is 
immutable and immediate but that's about it) and maybe that's the reason 
why they feel that inplace modification is special or bad.  Dunno.  Chad 
mentioned issues that can arise in complex code from inplace 
modification and took that as his personal guideline to avoid it.  I 
have a different personal guideline...

Kind regards

	robert