From: Richard Conroy <richard.conroy@...>
Date: 2007-11-21T21:45:15+09:00
Subject: Re: porting java methods to ruby

On Nov 21, 2007 10:25 AM, Martin Durai <martin@angleritech.com> wrote:
> Hi peter,
>
> i have attached my java code which i have to port to ruby. could you
> help me with this

<code snipped>

I would refactor that code before you consider porting it to anything. Theres
a lot of external dependencies and a lot of unsafe constructs. That single
function uses the following instance members:
usePC
eventType
pcStart
pcEnd
posStart
posEnd
pc
buf
getText

You are also not doing a lot of input value checking, and the function is very
non-DRY. All of the return values are side effects of the method,
defined elsewhere.
The position holder (the function argument) should be a class.

However its par for the course in Java really. However even in Java you would
find that function very difficult to unit test without complex mocking.

You would never write a Ruby function that behaved like that. You would break
up the responsibilities of the function into individual pieces
(functions), then take advantage
of Ruby's better literal syntax and conditionals to clear up the messy
conditionals.
(The Ruby switch statement is a thing of beauty).