From: Rich Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2002-04-16T11:45:00+09:00
Subject: RE: RCR: xx: yy as shorter notation for :xx => yy

Actually, since the current Ruby-way of faking out keyword arguments
are:

def method(x=nil, y=nil, z=nil)
  if x.kind_of? Hash
    x,y,z = x[:x], x[:y], x[:z]
  end
  puts x, y, z
end

1) method(:x=>1, :z=>2)
2) method(1,2,3)

If you allowed a hash to be defined by: "key: value"

How would you distinguish between that dynamically building a hash (1
above) and your keyword argument idea in (3 below)?

3) method(x: 1, z: 2)

I like the way that (1) dynamically builds a hash...it looks clean
because you don't need the {} characters.

I like your idea of "var: value" for keyword arguments.  I think it
makes very good syntactic sense.  It 'feels' more like a symbol/var but
the inversion of the : differentiates the intent.  Being able to
refactor this code as:

def method(x=nil, y=nil, z=nil)
  puts x, y, z
end

4) method(z: 2, x: 1)

Is really nice.

-rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Yukihiro Matsumoto [mailto:matz@ruby-lang.org]
> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 10:10 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: RCR: xx: yy as shorter notation for :xx => yy
> 
> Hi,
> 
> In message "RCR: xx: yy as shorter notation for :xx => yy"
>     on 02/04/16, Jean-Hugues ROBERT <jean_hugues_robert@yahoo.com>
writes:
> |I would like
> |   xxx: yyy
> |to be equivalent to
> |   :xxx => yyy.
> 
> Hmm, I was thinking to use "xxx: yyy" for keyword arguments in the
> future release.  But this one too is intresting.  I'd like to hear
> opinion from others.
> 
> 							matz.