From: Yossef Mendelssohn <ymendel@...>
Date: 2007-11-25T07:12:52+09:00
Subject: Enumerable#detect_result ?

Actual code from a recent project:

    # This is bunk, but I'm tired and can't think of the right way to
do this
    # I was trying formats.detect, but that just returns the format,
not the result
    result = nil
    formats.each do |f|
      result = f.process(mesg)
      break if result
    end

In this context, 'formats' is an array of format objects, each of
which represents a format a message can take. The process method takes
in a message, checks it against the format object's configuration, and
returns either nil (if there was no match) or some useful value.

Thanks to testing, my original concept of

    formats.detect { |f|  f.process(mesg) }

was rejected as being wrong. After all, I want the result of the
process call, not the format object. I could go with collect/detect,
but knowing I want the first makes that rather pointless, especially
if processing could be expensive and the array could be long.

Is there anything like Enumerable#detect_result? Is there any desire
for it? Is there any better name?

--
-yossef