From: Adam Shelly <adam.shelly@...>
Date: 2008-07-03T02:13:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Ranges and Enumerable problems

On 7/2/08, Glen Holcomb <damnbigman@gmail.com> wrote:
> That is interesting.  I wonder why it doesn't work as you would expect.  The
> range object seems to be correct (at least through limited include? testing)
> however it returns incomplete info whenever you use an Enumerable method or
> a method that appears to use an Enumerable method.
>
It's not Enumerable, it's the Range class's #each method.
In general, Ranges use the <=> operator to test against the first and
last element to determine inclusion, but they use #succ to generate
the next element for #each.  Some odd behavior arises because
(s<=>s.succ) != -1 for all s.
I thought that was the whole issue, but it turns out '10' <=> '~' is -1.
It turns out the Range class has special code to deal with Strings -
it also checks that s.succ.length < end.length.   Without that, your
example range would enumerate forever.

There has been discussion off and on about changing Range to use some
new alternate method to #succ which would guarantee 'sane' behavoir,
but nothing has ever come of it.

-Adam