From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2007-11-03T09:27:25+09:00
Subject: Passing keyword arguments

Lets say I have a method using the not-so-uncommon keyword options
pattern:

  def foo(*args)
    opts  = (Hash === args.last ? args.pop : {})
    ...

Now I want to define another method, which is essentially a special
alias, that places a particular option as the first argument:

  def bar(opt, *args)
    foo(*args, :baz => opt)  # doesn't work.
  end

Is there no better way to do this than:

  def bar(opt, *args)
    opts  = (Hash === args.last ? args.pop : {})
    opts[:baz] = opt
    args << opts
    foo(*args)
  end

Boy, it really makes you wish we had keyword arguments built-in to the
language!!! I forget, will we have those in 1.9? If so how the above
look then?

T.