From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-07-14T05:43:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Dynamic Methods

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Campbell" <michael_s_campbell@yahoo.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2002 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: Dynamic Methods


>
> --- John <nojgoalbyspam@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Basically I thought it was nigh impossible too.  But you never know
> > in this
> > crazy world.  I see things quite often that I didn't know where
> > possible.
> > Ruby has a few of those!!!
>
> I'm still curious as to why you think you need this feature, however
implemented.

I can see where he's coming from. He wants
to allow arbitrary abbreviations in textual
commands and use the command name as the
method name (if I understand correctly).

Both are sensible, I just had never thought
of combining those features.

Reminds me of the old DEC-10 days, where
these commands (IIRC) were all the same:
DIRECTORY, DIRECTOR, DIRECTO, DIRECT,
DIREC, DIRE, DIR, DI

Bascially an arbitrary unambiguous
abbreviation. Actually, probably only the
first six characters were significant
anyway.

<oldtimer mode="reminisce">Why six chars?
Because that's how many sixbit characters
will fit in a 36-bit word. Yes, they
converted back and forth between sixbit
(letters, numbers, and a little more) and
ASCII. And you guys hate Unicode so much!
But the OS needed to save space because
memory was so precious, even though the
mainframe had a whopping 448K of RAM. And
we *liked* it. :)  448K... ha, bet my
cellphone has more than that now.
</oldtimer>


Hal Fulton