From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2008-08-24T10:35:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Why 'if 0' succeeds in Ruby

On Sun, 2008-08-24 at 02:31 +0900, Dave Bass wrote:
> But unfortunately Ruby regards both false and nil as not-true. For some 
> reason, this is touted as a feature.
> 
> False and nil are two quite different concepts and should not be 
> conflated.

Exactly! To make matters worse, Lisp "traditionally" treated nil as
false, but Scheme has "true", "false" and "nil" and nil is treated as
true in Scheme.

So I don't have a problem with 0 not being false, but I do have a
problem with nil being false in Lisp and Ruby and true in Scheme. 0 is
0, nil is nil, true is true and false is false and that is that!

:)
-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
ruby-perspectives.blogspot.com

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." --
Alfr��d R��nyi via Paul Erd��s