From: Jason Persampieri <helgaorg@...>
Date: 2002-11-26T13:15:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Things That Newcomers to Ruby Should Know (11/24/02)

> You're not changing the letter 'a' itself; you're
> changing a string
> which has the letter 'a' in it.
> 
> To put it another way:
> 
> You can have more than one "a" string:
> 
>   s = "a"
>   t = "a"
> 
> and if you change or increment s:
> 
>   s.succ!   # s is now "b"
> 
> t doesn't change.
> 
> But there's only one of each number.  If you were
> allowed to do
> 
>   3.succ!
> 
> or
> 
>   3 += 1
> 
> then when you did this:
> 
>   puts 3 * 5
> 
> the output would be "20", because you would have
> incremented the
> actual object 3.
> 
> 
> David
> 
> -- 
> David Alan Black
> home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
> work: blackdav@shu.edu
> Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav

So wouldn't it make send to have a somewhat global
.succ! method and only allow the programmer to
increment (++) on those that have it?

I mean, C doesn't allow 3++ either (well, it may ALLOW
it, but it doesn't mean anything).  I think that
argument is pretty bogus.  

Jason Persampieri
Programmer
Kush Games