From: "Matthias Wächter" <matthias@...>
Date: 2007-09-03T18:49:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby stupidities

On 31.08.2007 05:24, Kenneth McDonald wrote:
> Having said that, here's my first entry. I think it's utterly stupid
> (can you tell I just wasted some time tracking this down?) that
> 
>    "abc"[0] == "a"

You can change that behavior yourself without installing >=1.9

class String
  alias :old_index :[]
  def [](*a)
    a.length==1 ? old_index(*a).chr : old_index(*a)
  end
  def asc       # this is from [1]
    case size
      when 0; nil
      when 1; old_index(0)
      else unpack 'c*'
    end
  end
end

"abc"[0] == "a"       # -> true
"abc"[1] == "b"       # -> true
"abc"[0,1] == "a"     # -> true
"a".asc == 97         # -> true
"abc".asc == [97,98,99] # -> true

But certainly this may break existing libs, so be careful.


[1] http://forum.ruby-portal.de/viewtopic.php?p=2654#2654

- Matthias