From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2007-10-16T06:30:52+09:00
Subject: Re: simplifying the defined api

On 10/13/07, Roger Pack <rogerpack2005@gmail.com> wrote:
> Question: A recent suggestion to ruby was to have all
> defined?
> method's return true or nil.

Let me turn this around.

Why care that it returns truth values other than literal true?

The interpretation of objects as truth values is consistent within
ruby,  defined? is one of cases in which that is used to advantage to
convey additional information.


> So my question is...does anybody ever use "defined?" for anything
> besides true/nil?

Sure, it's useful to know that the syntactic properties of an
expression are dynamically.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/