From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-04-10T02:54:30+09:00
Subject: Re: capital method names

Hi,

In message "Re: capital method names"
    on 02/04/10, Paul Brannan <paul@atdesk.com> writes:

|When doing name lookups (and no parens are supplied), Ruby first checks
|to see if a local variable of that name exists; if not, then it checks
|to see if a method of that name exists.

But notice it's done in the compile time.  Local variables are
recognized statically at the compile time.  Constants are not.

Anyway, there're both impementation and philosophical reasons NOT to
allow Constant-like method call without parens.

  * unlike local variables, constants are dynamically controlled, so
    if you allow constant replacement, it slows down constant
    access. [implementation]

  * in fact, I regret method calls just like local variable access,
    which you called "replacement".  It confuses programs (attribute
    replacement like "obj.attr" is OK).  I don't think it's good to go
    further. [philosophical]

							matz.