From: Tom Sawyer <transami@...>
Date: 2003-02-04T01:29:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Local variables & blocks

On Monday 03 February 2003 09:14 am, ahoward wrote:

> summary :
>
>   nil      -> a non-initialized pointer (non assigned to)
>   defined? -> detects a non-existent pointer (not declared and defined)

i understand. thank you for the deep explination. still:

	puts x  #--> undefined local variable or method 'x' for....

why not return 'nack'? then #defined? is not needed for trivial cases.

use of nack for most things would raise an error. which is an important 
distinction to nil. nil, i feel, needs more methods, like .to_f returning 
0.0, etc. while something like nack would respond to nearly nothing. nil is 
sort of playing double roll of sometimes "nothing" and sometimes 
"non-applicable". likewise we have to do special method checks like defined? 
and respond_to? to compensate.

yes, i've gotten off the main of the topic. sorry. i do see your point though. 
uninitialized dosen't exactly apply.

-- 
tom sawyer, aka transami
transami@transami.net