From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-09-25T15:12:25+09:00
Subject: Re: are functions/methods "first class objects"?

Bulat,

Your problem is interesting, but I can't provide much help because your post is
difficult to read:
 - it is an HTML email, whereas code is much much easier to read in plain text,
and plain text should always be used on newgroups and mailing lists
 - your writing is sloppy: all lower-case letters
 - the description of what you want to achieve is unclear

I am only gently criticising you here, and merely wish to point out that you
will probably get a better response if you pay attention to clarity, detail and
netiquette.  Hopefully others can provide greater assistance.

Regarding what you want to achieve, I suggest you concentrate on the objective
(sorting files on multiple criteria) and not on the method (returning function
to sort).  You are trying to solve the problem in a functional way whereas I'm
sure it is better solved in Ruby using the OO paradigm.

If there is a pressing need to use the method you describe, I'd like to know
what it is and how I can best advise.

I hope this helps,

Gavin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bulat Ziganshin" <bulatz@integ.ru>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: are functions/methods "first class objects"?


> Hello Christian,
>
> Tuesday, September 24, 2002, 4:40:31 PM, you wrote:
>
> CS> Now, let us be honest, is it so important? I do a lot of
> CS> meta-programming, but I have never encountered a situation
> CS> requiring such a high level approach.
>
> i had. sorting a list of filenames on given criterion:
>
> sort_by "es", filenames  # sorts by extension then size
> sort_by "n", filenames   # sorts by filename w/o path and extension
>
> i want to create meta-function which returns function to sort (or just
> compare criterions) given ordering string:
>
> sort_by "es"
> returns
> {|filename| [File.ext(filename), File.stat(filename).size] }
>
> can you (and Ruby :) help me? -eval
>
> --
> Best regards,
>  Bulat                            mailto:bulatz@integ.ru
>