From: "Hal E. Fulton" Date: 2002-04-30T23:12:16+09:00 Subject: Re: An example of the beauty of Ruby... ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Alan Black" To: "ruby-talk ML" Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 8:01 AM Subject: RE: An example of the beauty of Ruby... > Hi -- > > On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Rich Kilmer wrote: > > > OK...about as nitpicking as it gets... > > Don't flatter yourself :-) > > > upload unless unchanged? > > > > Per the standard Rubyism of the question mark for Boolean methods. > > OK, now I want to know why the non-? version doesn't bother me. > I think it's because the name already denotes state, and therefore > connotes Booleanism. Or vice versa, or something. > > As opposed to, say, var.nil, which without the question mark doesn't > convey any kind of test. > > To put it another way: there's nothing else, other than a true-false > indicator, that "unchanged" could be (natural languagewisely > speaking). Actually, in this case, I did do it deliberately. As David says, the name itself implies a Boolean. I like it better without the ?, even though normally I'd use one. As for the double negative, that's just how my brain works... it wasn't a conscious decision. I think I like it this way. Or at least, I don't dislike it. :) :) Hal Fulton