From: Ned Konz <ned@...>
Date: 2002-07-08T23:57:16+09:00
Subject: Re: is there a better string.each?

On Monday 08 July 2002 04:43 am, George Ogata wrote:
> Well, "usefulness" depends on the application.  And it seems that
> sometimes, strings are better seen as arrays (not Arrays!) of
> characters, and at other times, as arrays of lines (and at yet
> other times, as arrays of words or paragraphs).

I think some of the discussion about String is confusing Strings with 
higher-level concepts.

To me, Strings just have characters. They are akin to (say) ByteArrays 
in Smalltalk, which just contain bytes.

Imposing additional structure on top of this (lines, words, 
paragraphs, etc.) should be the job of more special-purpose 
constructs.

I would argue that structure in text should be handled by (say) Text 
objects of some sort, rather than Strings. Objects of the Text type 
would also know about context.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE