From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-06-14T03:56:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Relational operators redux (returning RHS)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Austin Ziegler" <austin@halostatue.ca>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 9:13 AM
Subject: Relational operators redux (returning RHS)

[much interesting snippage]

> The way I see it, nil
> is a special value. Even though nil is represented with a singleton
> object, nil for an Object is not necessarily the same as nil for an
> Array in a logical sense.
> 
> I know I'm bringing up stuff that might be close to two years old,
> but I haven't seen any further discussion on this, and I thought
> that it might be worth mentioning about how other systems implement
> the handling of NULL/nil values.

Hmm... in Ruby, nil is a "real" value. It can be compared
to itself or anything else in a meaningful way.

I'd fear changing this. I don't think I want more than
one kind of nil (if I understand you rightly).

Some languages have many kinds of "false" value. Ruby 
has only false and nil. I think that's one of the 
beauties of Ruby.

JM2CW,

Hal Fulton