From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-07-19T05:56:34+09:00
Subject: Re: syntactic sugar buzz

On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 09:17:45PM +0900, dblack@wobblini.net wrote:
> 
> My favorite slogan for Ruby is:
> 
>   The triumph of balance over symmetry.
> 
> It means, for example, that it might make sense for nil to have #to_s
> -- and that it still might *not* make sense for nil to have #split.
> One does not imply the other.  Every decision is made carefully, one
> at a time, in the interest of the usefulness of the system overall.

That makes perfect sense, since the logical way to use split would be
with something like nil.to_s.split.  If you really want split to return
something "useful" from nil directly, I'd say add your own split to
NilClass and be done with it.


> 
> That's why I don't care about symmetry or consistency (which I think
> in this case mean much the same thing).  We're lucky enough to have
> Matz hand-crafting the language with the greatest care; I think that's
> a higher-percentage prospect than a principle of uniformity :-)

I care about consistency -- in a way that makes sense, of course.  I
don't see how nil lacking a split() violates that.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
awj @reddit: "The terms never and always are never always true."