From: Mark Slagell <ms@...>
Date: 2000-10-23T21:26:42+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:5786] Re: Array#insert

Conrad Schneiker/Austin/Contr/IBM wrote:
> 
> 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.)

Hmmm....

~/dl/ruby-1.6.1:>diff parse.c~ parse.c
6894c6894
<     if ((c == '!' || c == '?') && is_identchar(tok()[0]) && !peek('=')) {
---
>     if ((c == '!' || c == '?' || c == '~') && is_identchar(tok()[0]) && !peek('=')) {