From: Robert Dober <robert.dober@...>
Date: 2007-07-19T06:09:43+09:00
Subject: Re: syntactic sugar buzz

On 7/18/07, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:
> 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.
It makes perfect sense, but it is an example ex nihilis as I was
complaining about nil.to_i and Integer(nil), or am I in the wrong
thread (has happened to me before :()?

>
>
> >
> > 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.
Nor do I, nor did I say so, I just wanted to say, hey if nil has to_i,
it can have split too, that would be no big deal at all.

Cheers
Robert

-- 
I always knew that one day Smalltalk would replace Java.
I just didn't know it would be called Ruby
-- Kent Beck