From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2009-12-06T03:05:33+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby 1.9 and collect

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Raul Jara <raul.c.jara@gmail.com> wrote:
> Under ruby 1.8.6, running
>
> [1, 2, 3].collect
>
> results in an array of [1, 2, 3].  In 1.9, however, running
>
> [1, 2, 3].collect
>
> results in an Enumerator, which I then have to call .to_a on.
> Alternately, I can supply a block
>
> [1, 2, 3].collect {|x| x }
>
> and end up with an array.  So I guess that means that the default block
> of {|x| x} was removed from the function.  I was just wondering if
> anyone had any insight into why that change was made, because it feels
> very counter intuitive to me.   I really liked the elegance of opening
> up a file and just calling collect to turn it into an array.

Actually I find it counterintuitive that Enumerable#collect works
without a block in Ruby 1.8. In fact, that little quirk isn't
documented in the 1.8 version of the pickaxe.

And I would suggest that even more elegant (and intention revealing)
than calling collect to turn something into an array would be to use
to_a  whilch will work on any Enumberable, including files since File
is a subclass of IO and  IO mixes in Enumerable.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

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