From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-02-13T06:45:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Range#length?!?!?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yukihiro Matsumoto" <matz@ruby-lang.org>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: Range#length?!?!?


> Hi,
> 
> In message "Re: Range#length?!?!?"
>     on 03/02/13, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@dmu.ac.uk> writes:
> 
> |<OT> This has always puzzled me, that
> |the longer gap ('..' vs '...') is the shorter interval, but it's way
> |too late to change now, and knowing what I know of Matz's work,
> |there's going to be a VERY good reason for this! </OT>
> 
> Unfortunately not for this case.  ".." was there first, so only "..."
> was available when I wanted end excluding range.  I made up the reason
> that ".. would be used more often, so that it should be shorter", but
> I myself does not feel this is very good reason.

I would rationalize it this way: .. works the same as
in Pascal (the only language I know that also has this
construct, though there are probably others). So the
newer behavior gets the newer syntax (...).

Maybe two weak reasons can be combined to make
a stronger one... ;)

Hal