From: "Daniel P. Zepeda" <daniel@...>
Date: 2002-01-01T07:58:48+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:29908] Re: How to check free diskspace?

On Tue, 1 Jan 2002 06:59:26 +0900
Mathieu Bouchard <matju@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 1 Jan 2002, Le Wang wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > I've checked "Programming Ruby", and searched the ML to no avail.  So
> > how do you check free disk space, other than to parse 'df' output?
> 
> Mount = Struct.new(
>   :device,
>   :path,
>   :fs_type,
>   :options,
>   :freq,
>   :passno)
> 
> mounts = File.open("/etc/mtab") {|f|
>   f.map {|x|
>     Mount.new(*x.chomp.split) }}

What does the '*' mean in this context? I've seen this idiom a couple of times
on this list. I've tried the above code with and without the '*' and have noted
that with the '*', each element from the split gets assigned to each part of the
Struct, while an array gets assigned to just the first value of the Struct without
the '*'. I understand what is doing, but *why* is it doing it? Is there somewhere
this is documented (I must've missed it)? 

TIA
> 
> ________________________________________________________________
> Mathieu Bouchard                   http://hostname.2y.net/~matju
> 


-- 
Daniel P. Zepeda
daniel@zepeda-zone.net