From: "Thorsten Müller" <thorsten@80beans.com>
Date: 2008-06-12T01:54:44+09:00
Subject: Re: each with else

> makes me wanting Eric's patch for the simplified lambda syntax even
> more, than we can write in pure Ruby
>
> module Enumerable
>     def each_else each_blk, else_blk=nil
>            return else_blk && else_blk.call if empty?
>            each &each_blk
>     end
> end
>
> and we could call it with
>
> ary.each_else do | ele | puts ele end, do puts "empty" end
> or
> ary.each_else {|ele| puts ele }, {|| puts "empty" }
> without having checked for precedence, maybe some "()" are needed ;)
>
> Guess that this is pretty much what OP wants, right? ;)
>

Yes :-) That would be something in the right direction.
My first thought was to propose something like that for Rails only.
But then I thought that the plain form with a "full" else would
give us a cleaner syntax.

Funny that you mention smalltalk. I don't know much about it, but
remember to have read a discussion about it's pure oop and that you
can handle even core language features like if/then/else like any
other class.
This would be an example where it would be handy to have it.

hmmmm, maybe the RCR should be even more comprehensive and
request for a completely new language construct that would allow
to built new core commands, based on multiple blocks.
Not only if/then, but case/when also.

But that's too much for now, a new each would be enough...