From: Benoit Daloze <eregontp@...>
Date: 2010-08-07T20:07:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Adding sugar to Ruby

Hi,
On 6 August 2010 21:41, Jan Lelis <prog@janlelis.de> wrote:
> Hi, I've collected some nice little additions to Ruby and put them in a
> gem called zucker.
>
> Some of the features:
>
> * control structure like iteration:
>
> iterate [1,2], [3,4,5] do |e,f|
>  puts "#{e},#{f}"
> end
> # outputs
> #  1,3
> #  2,4
> #  ,5

[3,4,5].zip([1,2]).each { |e,f| puts "#{f},#{e}" }
would do the same (the reverse order is needed to get the extra value).

It is definitely better looking than something like Vector#each2, though.

> * Regexp.union shortcut
>
> /Ruby\d/ | /test/i | "cheat"
> # creates a Regexp similar to:
> #  /(Ruby\d|[tT][eE][sS][tT]|cheat)/

Looks like syntactic sugar. I would need a real use-case to see if it
is really better. You can already do something like this:

case str
  when /Ruby\d/, /test/i, "cheat"
end

> * Blocks, where nil can be egocentric
>
> egonil do
>  nil.some_methods.that[:do].not.exist
> end # => nil
>
> * Array#to_proc
>
> [1,2,3].map &[:*, 5]  # => [5, 10, 15]

That is rather cool !
I extended a bit the concept to allow multiple syntax:
http://github.com/eregon/Classes/blob/master/to_proc.rb
I would not use any of these for serious code, however.

> * More at http://rubyzucker.info / http://github.com/janlelis/zucker
>
> What's your opinion about these methods?
>
> J-_-L
>

Some nice hacks and ideas. I guess some real examples would help to
see the utility of it.