[ruby-talk:5247] Re: Changes in 1.6.0

Greetings, all...

Please excuse this message, which may appear "greedy"...
perhaps different experts can share the effort of answering
these questions.

I am trying to have a deep rather than shallow understanding
of Ruby... but that is slow in coming.

I am curious as to the exact meaning of some of these items
from the list of changes in 1.6.0... I have reproduced several
here that were especially interesting and/or unclear (about
20% of the list).

See below. Thanks for any comments...

Hal


>
> Here's the brief list of changes from 1.4.x to 1.6.0.
> This list is by courtesy of Tomoya Akamatsu.
>
> = Changes in 1.6.0
>

> * no to_a for multiple assignment (uses to_ary if available)

I don't understand this at all.

> * rescue => variable
> * rescue modifier
> * rescue clause for method body

May we see some examples?

> * syntax enhanced, e.g.
>
>   a,b = File::split "foo/bar"

I see that this doesn't work in my 1.4.3 -- I thought this would have
worked long ago.

>   a = yield b

Meaning that the block can return a value? Does it use a return statement or
is it
optional? Or am I missing the point?

>   [1,2,3].sort do|a,b| b<=>a end.reverse

Very nice...

>   [File::dirname "foo/bar"]

What does this mean? Isn't it an array without the brackets? Or is this an
array within an array?

> * singleton method for nil,true,false

???

>   no singleton method for Fixnums and Symbols yet

Meaning what? And what is a Symbol?

> * built-in 'final'

???

> * new regex \G (?>...)

???

> * regex does not support  \< and \> offically

???

> * regex option /p renamed to /m

Why?

> * compile time string concatenation

Example?

> * Integer#modulo
> * consistent %, divmod

OK, this was discussed at MUCH length a few months ago...
what is the end result? Can we summarize this, and is it
consistent with other languages or not?

> * nil as valid Hash value

Hmm... so we can't compare against nil to find if a value is
not there?

> * Symbol object

???