From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2008-05-08T21:49:06+09:00
Subject: Re: segmented method names

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 8:32 AM, Sandro Paganotti
<sandro.paganotti@gmail.com> wrote:
>  On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Jan Hegewald <hegewald@irmb.tu-bs.de> wrote:
>  >  in Objective-C it is possible to split a method name into several segments
>  > to be able to put a meaningful description before each argument, like
>  >  (BOOL)containsPointX:(int)x Y:(int)y
>  >
>  >  is there a ruby way to achieve something similar?> A solution can be:
>
>  #function
>  def contains_point(opts = { :x=>nil, :y=>nil })
>
>  end
>
>  # call
>  contains_point :x=>value, :y=>value

And in Ruby 1.9 you can also use the new hash literal syntax in the
call so it becomes:

   contains_point x: value y: value

Apple's RubyCocoa, which is implementing Ruby on the Objective-C
runtime actually turns this into an objective-c call.

However, the semantics of Ruby keyword/hash option parameters are
slightly different from the Smalltalk inspired Objective-C method
selectors. In Smalltalk/ObjectiveC   x:y: is a different message and
will find a different method than y:x:, whereas Ruby keyword/hash
parameters are order independent and aren't involved in resolving a
message to a method.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/