From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-04-30T16:57:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Sprintf: what does mean the percent symbol?

2008/4/29 David A. Black <dblack@rubypal.com>:
>  On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, Robert Klemme wrote:
> > > I've searched on the ruby pickaxe and several other ruby books but I
> > > haven't found anything on the % alone, obviously there are many use of
> > > that combined with option (array: %w, string: %q,%Q, regexp: %r, ...).
> > >
> >
> > That's a completely different story, here % I would not call "operator"
> because it is not runtime effective.  This occurrence of the percent sign is
> evaluated at compile time, more precisely during parsing.  All these are
> convenience syntaxes to more easily express certain literals.  For example,
> if you have a regular expression containing forward slashes the %r form is
> much easier on the eye:
> >
> > %r{/+} vs. /\/+/
> >
>
>  But not the brain :-) I know there's no consensus about these things,

Yeah, my initial reaction was "maybe not for _your_ brain". :-)

>  but I'll just put in a word for //. Having trained my brain to
>  understand /\/+/ at a glance, I always find it much harder to
>  understand things like {/+}, and similarly with /x-style regexes,
>  which I always have to slow down to read.

I for my part find longish regular expressions much, much more
readable and understandable if they are pulled apart with /x probably
across multiple lines and with comments.

>  Chacun à son cerveau :-)

I'm glad babelfish can help my brain decipher this. :-)))

Kind regards

robert

-- 
use.inject do |as, often| as.you_can - without end