From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2007-11-16T18:04:01+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby wish-list

On Nov 15, 2007 10:29 PM, Suraj Kurapati <snk@gna.org> wrote:
> James Britt wrote:
> > you'll get a return value than can be interpreted as true or false
>                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Bingo!  I don't want to restrict the return values of question-mark
> methods to only true and false because I see nothing special about
> 'true' and 'false'.  In my mind, they are just objects that just happen
> to have some useful equivalents when evaluated in a boolean context.
> And that's the key point here: context.
>
> Who cares what the type/class of an object really is, so long as the
> object can be *interpreted* in a meaningful way in the particular usage
> context?  Sounds like the fundamental concept of duck typing to me. :-)

I'm out of my league here (again), but I should mention that even
though we enjoy/love the flexibility of the Ruby language, that
freeness comes with a modicum of responsibility.

If you start turning ? into a Fixnum (i.e. that's what the #whatever?
method returns), you've started to turn a duck in to a goose (or cat,
dog, whatever).  Hey, whatever floats your boat...

I can't think of one single reason for a variable/accessor to have a ?
on the end of it.

Todd