From: Robert Klemme <lists@...>
Date: 2012-03-30T20:04:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Why z = Complex(1,2) rather than z = Complex.new(1,2)?

Jan E. wrote in post #1054047:
> Eric Hodel wrote in post #1054029:
>>
>> I've never heard that there was a convention to avoid capitalizing
>> method names, and I've been doing this a long time.
>
> This convention is in the Ruby book by Matz and Flanagan, saying that
> uppercase method names can be confused with constants (which is a bad
> thing in my opion).

Well, but there are only few cases of this plus in this case Complex() 
and Complex actually mean the same thing.

> So it's not that we made this up. ;-)

Everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

> In Netbeans I even get a warning:
>
> "Style: Method names traditionally use lowercase letters only"

Do you get that at the calling site or at the definition site?

> But it's not so much about conventions. These methods are simply
> counterintuitive. When I want to convert objects, the first thing that
> comes to my mind are the to_... methods. But I don't expect someone to
> pull a magical conversion "function" out of the Kernel module. Honestly,
> I think even experienced Ruby programmers are confused when they first
> see something like Float(4)

No, not at all.  An experienced Ruby programmer will identify this 
immediately as a method call.  And he will probably do

~$ ruby19 -e 'p method(:Float)'
#<Method: Object(Kernel)#Float>

And then do

ri19 Kernel#Float

But you do not have to use that method.

> Another problem is that constants and methods have different lookup
> algorithms, which doesn't allow you to put the conversion method for a
> subclass into the same containing module/class (unless you use qualified
> names all the time).

Can you show an example of what you cannot do?  At the moment I don't 
see the limitation.

> All in all, I think those methods really qualify as "Ruby warts" and
> should be removed as soon as possible. ;-)

There are far worse "warts" as you call them, for example class 
variables.

Kind regards

robert

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