From: Rich Kilmer Date: 2002-04-30T23:24:12+09:00 Subject: RE: An example of the beauty of Ruby... > -----Original Message----- > From: Hal E. Fulton [mailto:hal9000@hypermetrics.com] > Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 10:12 AM > To: ruby-talk ML > 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 > Well, lots of methods that append the ? in Ruby can linguistically be inferred to return a Boolean value (like File.exists?) but the idiom is to append the ? for Boolean methods...you don't have to follow it. Wow this is a silly conversation ;-) -rich