From: dblack@...
Date: 2007-08-02T00:10:44+09:00
Subject: Re: change method Array.new? (Was: Unexpected behavior with multidimensional arrays)

Hi --

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, Dan Zwell wrote:

> What would you guys think about removing the second parameter from Array.new 
> ? I suggest this for 2 reasons:
>
> If the object is a pass-by-copy class such as
>  Array.new(n, true), or Array.new(n, 23)
> then this syntax is exactly the same as
>  Array.new(n) {true}, or Array.new(n) {23}
>
> If the object is a pass-by-reference, such as
>  Array.new(n, Klass.new)
> this can be represented by
>  k=Klass.new
>  Array(n) {k}
> This syntax is less pretty, but does anybody even Array.new this way? It's a 
> sort of nice piece of syntactic sugar, but I don't see how it's actually 
> useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.
>
> If all of the above is true, I would suggest removing the second parameter 
> from this method, because it confuses plenty of newcomers.

I love not confusing newcomers, but at the same time I don't think
that something orthogonal and purposeful should be removed from the
language just for that reason.  In the end, the main target audience
for Ruby is non-newcomers.

Think of it as a rite of passage :-)  Sort of like realizing that:

   array.each {|a| puts a }

can be written as:

   puts array

or that ^ and $ operate per line rather than per string in regular
expressions.


David

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