From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2002-04-02T00:40:50+09:00
Subject: Re: String#begins?(s)

matz@ruby-lang.org (Yukihiro Matsumoto) writes:

> Hi,
> 
> In message "Re: String#begins?(s)"
>     on 02/04/01, Helmut Leitner <helmut.leitner@chello.at> writes:
> 
> |Would you like
> |  "head?"
> |  "tail?"
> |?
> 
> I like them, but I'm not sure whether they're clear or not.

If I saw just plain 'head' or 'tail', I'd assume they returned the
first element and the remaining elements from a list. When applied to
strings, I guess I'd assume the first character and the remaining
characters. I'd therefore be surprised to see a '?' variant that took
a parameter, and that looked at multiple characters:

   a = "hello"

   a.head         #=>  'a'  (in my mind)

   a.head?("he")  #=>  impedance mismatch


I'm not convinced we need the methods, but if we do, I think
#starts_with and #ends_with are good candidates for names.


Dave