From: Chris Pine <nemo@...>
Date: 2003-01-11T07:56:54+09:00
Subject: Re: dot-equals method?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@hypermetrics.com>

What about *other* method calls in the expression?
  obj .= foo + bar
Does that mean
  obj = obj.foo + obj.bar
or
  obj = obj.foo + bar
or what?
----------------------------

Definitely not the former!

Hmmm... I'm trying to figure out what someone would be trying to do with an
expression like that:

  str = 'olleh'
  str .= reverse + ' world'

Something like that?  Yeah... it is kind of weird.  The only logical thing I
can think of is for `str' to be 'hello' after this, but for the expression
to return 'hello world'.  This certainly does not jive with something like:

  num += 5 + 2

...where `num' is 7, not 5.

Good point!  It's kind of neat, but clearly breaks the Principle of Least
Surprise in anything but the simplest of uses.  This is what I was looking
for.

Thanks,

Chris