From: Minero Aoki <aamine@...>
Date: 2002-07-01T19:00:38+09:00
Subject: ruby-dev summary 17541-17608

Hi all,
This is a summary of ruby-dev ML in these days.

ruby-dev summary 17541-17608 (2002-06-22 ... 2002-06-27)

[ruby-dev:17421] broken string when unterminated "#{".

  -- From last article --
  In current ruby, "#{"abc"}" is parsed as '"abc"', not
  '"#{" abc "}"'. Is this behavior smart or bad?
  Tanaka Akira claimed that the notation of string
  became a kind of 'control structure' and it is better that
  we can write Ruby's code in #{} without any escaping.
  Matz agreed his opinion.

  -- This week --
  Nobuyoshi Nakada has implemented "control structure #{...} block".
  But at the same time it breaks backward compatibility.
  For example:

    "...#{\"string\"}..."             # escape causes a syntax error.

    "...#{some code  # comment}..."   # comment shadows closing quote;
                                      # causes a syntax error.

  We must choose either powerful new function or backward
  compatibility.

  [to be continued]

[ruby-dev:17548] Ruby grammer

  TANAKA Akira has suggested clarifying the syntax of Ruby.
  The first topics are:
    * omission of method call parentheses
        e.g. print("hello") -> print "hello"
    * precedence of blocks

  Principles noted by matz:

    * method-calls without parentheses cannot be nested (?)
        # not acceptable (?)
        method method method var

    * do...end block associates with the most-left method call.
          m m()  do .... end
       -> m(m()) do .... end

          m ident  do .... end
       -> m(ident) do .... end   # `ident' is var_ref (lvar or method)

    * {...} block associates with the most-right identifier.
          m m() { .... }
       -> m(m() { .... }))

          m ident { .... }
       -> m(ident() { .... }))  # `ident' becomes method call.

    * Blocks can be chained.
       # acceptable
       m {....}.m {....}.m {....}
       m do....end.m do....end.m do....end

    * Blocks cannot be nested.
       # not acceptable
       m {....} {....}
       m {....} do....end

[ruby-dev:17594] %w(... #{...} ...)

  Nobuyoshi Nakada has suggested a new literal-embedded expression
  like this:

    %W(word word str#{....} word)

  Example:

    var = 1
    %W( word word #{var}str word )  # ['word','word','1str','word']

  This idea is accepted.