From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2009-02-20T01:34:36+09:00
Subject: Re: What are your favorite Ruby features?


From: "Juan Zanos" <juan_zanos@talkhouse.com>
>



> One of the things that confuses this discussion is that some people  
> are talking about the use of parentheses with regard to operator  
> precedence rules and others are discussing far more arbitrary and  
> questionable usages such as in declaring and calling functions.   I  
> think it's telling that such a seemingly minor complexity is cause  
> for confusion.

Again:

>> ===
>> def initialize foo, bar, batz = {}, &block
>> #(vs.)
>> def initialize( foo, bar, batz = {}, &block )
>> ===

Nowadays, my brain finds the latter declaration with the parens,
more restful to the eye than the former.

It's easier for me to see the structure at-a-glance in the 
latter....

I find these reasons sufficient and non-arbitrary.


> I doubt you'll get much disagreement that operator precedence rules  
> for c (or Ruby) are complex enough that there are cases where the use  
> of parentheses simplifies reading.   That doesn't seem to be  
> something anyone is questioning.

But we do get disagreement among programmers as to the *degree*
to which parens ought to be used to clarify operator precedence.

The same kind of disagreement happens in C with regard to 
whether and when to use braces when the body of a conditional
is a single statement.

  if (foo)
    bar();
  else
    baz();

  if (foo) {
    bar();
  }
  else {
    baz();
  }

  if (xyzzy)
    if (foo)
      bar();
    else
      baz();

  if (xyzzy) {
    if (foo)
      bar();
    else
      baz();
  }