From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2002-04-21T23:44:46+09:00
Subject: Re: A few ideas/suggestions

Hi --

On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, Tobias Reif wrote:

> Michael Brailsford wrote:
>
>
> > Well, first I think that it makes a lot of sense if Dir#[] accepted a
> > Regexp as well a String like it currently does.  String#[] already
> > implements something similar.  I think that Dir[/.*\.rb/] makes a lot of
> > sense.
>
>
> I think so too.

I don't think the fact that String#[] can take a regex argument is a
good regex argument.  Hash#[] can take anything, as can Hash.[] (the
class method, which might be a better parallel since the Dir one is
really Dir.[]).  That doesn't mean that other #[]'s should be expected
or required to emulate Hash's []'s.  There's no universal, underlying
[].

Personally I'm not convinced of the practical usefulness of
Dir[aRegexp] (as last night's #ruby-lang logs will verify :-) though
that doesn't mean others wouldn't find it useful.  In more practical
terms, I'm not sure what array of strings (filenames) would be tested
against the regex for inclusion.  Is it always Dir["*"]?  Or
Dir["."].entries?

For example:

 Dir[/.*\.rb/]

would be equivalent, I guess, to:

 some_array.grep(/.*\.rb/)

But what is that some_array?


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav