From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-07-08T23:57:23+09:00
Subject: Re: is there a better string.each?

Hi,

In message "Re: is there a better string.each?"
    on 02/07/08, George Ogata <g_ogata@optushome.com.au> writes:

|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).

Agreed.

|Since there doesn't seem to be a universally happy medium, perhaps the 
|problem lies in assuming there is one.  I think the method "each" is the 
|problem: it's ambiguous ("each what?").

If the name "each" is the problem, it is the problem that costs just a
few bits in your brain, so it's virtually nothing at all.

|Couldn't we have separate methods (as suggested earlier) #bytes, #chars (or 
|#characters), #words (maybe), #lines, #pars (or #paragraphs) for String?  

Possible.

|We have methods corresponding to the iterator/collector methods to set the 
|one that #each points to:  #useBytes, #useChars (or #useCharacters), 
|#useWords, #useLines, #usePars (or #useParagraphs).

I believe introducing another state to strings is a bad idea.
Instead, parameterized mix-in (e.g. include Enumerable using each_byte
as each) is a interesting idea, but it should be pretty hard to
implement.

							matz.