From: Joseph Lenton <jl235@...>
Date: 2011-01-15T20:04:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Parallel Assignments and Elegance/Complexity Ratio.

Josh Cheek wrote in post #974019:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Kedar Mhaswade
> <kedar.mhaswade@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> Kedar
>>
>> --
>> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>>
>>
> I don't use it very often, but when I do, it usually makes an elegant
> solution. I think part of the reason it doesn't seem that way is because
> you
> are playing with it in too sterile of an environment. For example, you
> rate
> "x, (y, (z, a))=[1, [2, [3, 4]]]" as lowest, suggesting it is equivalent
> to
> "x=1;y=2;z=3;a=4" but this is not true. If you are actually assigning
> with
> literals, you would, of course, use the equivalent way, but if your data
> comes in as nested arrays, then you can't assign like that, instead you
> have
> to do something like this:
>
> def parallel(values)
>   x, (y, (z, a))=values
>   [x,y,z,a]
> end

Instead you could also do:

x, y, z, a = values.flatten

Which avoids making you look like your writing in LISP.

For small stuff parrallel assignment makes it look elegant, but like any 
language feature it can be abused. Although I don't think I've ever 
actually found a case where I've wanted to use this. Especially when 
most of the time my 'x, y, z and a' variables are unrelated so I don't 
want to use them together in the same statement.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.