From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2003-01-12T05:51:19+09:00
Subject: Re: dot-equals method?

Daniel Carrera <dcarrera@math.umd.edu> wrote:
> Why can't we say:
> 
> x += 2     ==     x = x + 2
> x *= 2     ==     x = x + 2
> x .= foo   ==     x = x . foo
> 
> I don't see the extra collapsing syntax (yes I realize that '.' is
> different from '+', but syntatically they are used the same).

'2' is an argument to +, whereas 'foo' is a method.

As was pointed out in another post, in the op= methods, the entire right
hand side is treated as an argument to the operator, whereas . can only
take a single method name as an 'argument'.

martin