From: hipster <hipster@...4all.nl>
Date: 2000-10-23T16:48:20+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:5773] Re: Object pipes.

On Mon, 23 Oct 2000  15:52:55 +0900, Conrad Schneiker/Austin/Contr/IBM wrote:
> This is a speculative half-baked ksh/bash shell-inspired question:
> 
> Can the right hand side of t = w.x.y.z be regarded (in some plausible 
> sense) as something of an "object pipe", with "." roughly playing the role 
> of "|"?

IMO this is a false analogy. In the object case
- no information is `piped' along, except for a reference to self (or
  another receiver), i.e., encapsulation is preserved;
- the object instance(s) are probably persistent for the duration of
  the evaluation of the entire expression, whereas the components in a
  pipe expression disappear as soon as their execution (which is very
  much like a class method or singleton call) is done;
- the result of every subexpression is another expression, while the
  result of a pipe subexpression is bytes.

I suspect one could make an assertion about the orthogonality of the
chained methods calls expression, too.

The semantics differ too much to make for a nice analogy, so my answer
would be: no.  :)

	Michel