[ruby-talk:5774] Re: Array#insert

Mark Slagell wrote:

# Sigh. I hadn't thought of how an underscore blends in with the
# surroundings. It certainly doesn't grab the eye the way ! and ? do.  So
# the dup'ed version, as you've written it, is easier to read.

Well, if it's any consolation, I brought up the ! issue a while back too. 

I am still unhappy with it, because it seems like it "should" follow your 
previously proposed scheme. It seems somewhat Perlish to me in terms of 
not having a good general idea of what you are looking at until you look 
up the pieces.

I guess now I would now most prefer the dup solution, and I retroactively 
would have preferred that originally the ! should indicate the 
((supposedly) more exceptional!) nondestructive version. (I think someone 
mentioned that the ! idea came from scheme, and IIRC it was also mentioned 
that unlike Ruby, scheme only/always uses ! for destructive methods.) 

If it weren't for backward compatibility, something a little more compact 
and a little more visually distinguished such as .!. that could be used 
instead of .dup. might be nice.

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)