From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju@...>
Date: 2002-01-12T00:51:55+09:00
Subject: Re: The * operator...


On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Sean Chittenden wrote:

> What's the * operator called when used in a method's arguments?
> foo( ['asdf','zxcv','qwer']) # Will pass one arg
> foo(*['asdf','zxcv','qwer']) # Will pass three args
> What class is the * method apart of, and what's it called?  Silly
> little question, but I haven't seen any references to its name.  <:~)

I would say that this unary * is not an "operator", or at least, not at
all like the other operators, because *x is not an expression.

i'd call * the Rest Prefix, but this is how *I* see the thing, and is
somewhat influenced by CommonLisp. In CommonLisp, you'd write def
x(a,*b)...end as (defun x(a &rest b)...) Where &rest is a special symbol
known that only defun understands.

In RubySchema.rb (my proposed object system for ruby code), "Rest" doesn't
have its own class, and instead is considered an attribute in several
kinds of objects, like Multiple-expressions, Multiple-variables,
DefMethods, Messages, Super, Array-literals, ...

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