From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-01-11T05:15:51+09:00
Subject: Re: dot-equals method?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Pine" <nemo@hellotree.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 2:05 PM
Subject: dot-equals method?


> Hello,
>
> I keep finding myself wanting to write things like this:
>
>   string.=reverse
>   input.=split /\s*/
>
> instead of this:
>
>   string = string.reverse
>   input = input.split /\s*/

I understand. But in these two cases I guess
you'd want reverse! and split! instead.

> It's a silly thing, I guess, but after years of programming in Ruby I
> *still* find myself trying to do this... so maybe there's something to
this.
>
> Is there a good reason why this couldn't be done?  (Does it break some
> syntax somewhere, or just not make sense?)  Would it be possible to do
> something like this without hacking the interpreter?

I've thought about this before. I think you'd
probably have to use a symbol for the method,
to distinguish from a toplevel method call or
self.meth, but then the parameters wouldn't
make sense.

All in all, I think it would cause more trouble
than it helped us. Just my opinion.

Hal