From: Rob Marshall <robmarshall@...>
Date: 2011-12-09T03:10:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Confusing results from string multiplication

Well at least I started a lively discussion :-)

And after some thought, I guess this all does make sense in that *obj 
means: "splat-obj", which means: split obj into its individual 
components. As pointed out by Robert earlier, *2 (or splat-2) results in 
a simple '2'. So the syntax:

11.to_s *2

Is really '11.to_s splat-2', or: '11.to_s 2' which does base conversion. 
It all makes sense now. But, coming from other languages where that's 
not the behavior, it takes some getting used to.

And, Yossef, yes I agree that it probably wouldn't take me all day to 
figure it out, it's actually pretty obvious with a little help from the 
forum :-). And, no, my opinion is NOT that methods can't have arguments, 
it's just that (unless I do what Pete suggested, i.e. run it with 
warnings turned on) I would not have thought of this particular syntax 
as ambiguous, especially coming from another language where '* 2' and 
'*2' both mean: multiply by 2.

And, by the way, I still find that, if '11.to_s *2' does base conversion 
first and then converts the number to a string, then '11.to_s*2', to be 
consistent, should do that as well.

Thanks,

Rob

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