From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-07-31T00:56:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Language Q's

On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 12:43:02AM +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:
> I don't think so. The change I was discussing was that
> 
>    pierre(a, :b => 1, :c => 2)
> 
> could instead be written
> 
>    pierre a b: 1 c: 2
> 
> so that the b: and c: would be picked up and converted to a hash as
> now. I _think_ it's parsable, and it doesn't change the internals at
> all.

I see little advantage to doing this, since the function still has to
take its parameters out of the hash.  In python, I can write:

  def foo(a, b, c):
    print a, b, c

  foo(a=1, b=2, c=3)
  foo(c=3, b=2, a=1)
  foo(42, 42, c=9)

and I don't have to change foo at all in order for this to work.  If
Ruby were to get named parameters, I would really dislike changing all
my "legacy" code to support named parameters.

Paul