From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-02-01T21:41:13+09:00
Subject: Re: String#+

On Saturday, February 1, 2003, 2:51:35 AM, Chris wrote:

> Hello,

>   print 'hi',5  #  No problem.
>   print "hi#{5}"#  All good.
>   print 'hi'+5  #  TypeError!
>
> [...and Chris doesn't like this 'inconsitency']

Hi Chris,

I didn't have a real opinion on this before, and I couldn't really be
bothered having one now, but I will say this.  Given the variety of
replies here that support the current behaviour, maybe you need to
reconsider the appropriateness of the particular examples in your
tutorial.

Obviously, the "workaround" (print "hi" + 5.to_s) is unsuited for a
basic muckaround tutorial, as it is a bit messy.  Since you want to
demonstrate Ruby's ability to work with various objects, perhaps
emphasising the first one (print 'hi', 5) is the way to go.  I see
nothing particularly wrong with this.

Perhaps the main message to come out of this is that although there is
much in Ruby that recommends it for teaching to utter newbies, that
was not in fact the driving principle behind the language.  That may
or may not be reflected in that fact that I *never* chain arguments
with a 'print' statement, and *extremely rarely* even use 'print',
preferring 'puts'.  And yes, I lurve susbstitution :)

(My point: the only time I would use 'print' is if I was writing a
tutorial :-)

Cheers,
Gavin