From: Dossy <dossy@...>
Date: 2002-08-11T09:03:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Language Q's

On 2002.07.30, Justin Johnson <justinj@mobiusent.com> wrote:
> 2. I like the idea of named method parameters (ala Smalltalk, Objective-C).
> There was a discussion elsewhere showing something similar using hash
> tables.  With a bit of syntactic sugar...   :var => 10 could be  var: 10

How much syntactic toothpaste and mouthwash would be required to
disambiguate:

    yes = "yes"
    no = "no"
    x = nil
    p x.nil? yes: no

Hmm.  Not interesting?

    class Foo
        def hmm(x)
            p "hmm"
        end
        def hmm?(x)
            p "hmm?"
        end
        def bar
            p hmm?(yes: 10)
            p hmm? yes: no
            p hmm ? yes: no
        end
    end

    foo = Foo.new
    foo.bar

Too much syntactic sugar leads to code cavities.  Beware.

-- Dossy

-- 
Dossy Shiobara                       mail: dossy@panoptic.com 
Panoptic Computer Network             web: http://www.panoptic.com/ 
  "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
    folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)