From: Christoph Rippel <chr@...>
Date: 2000-11-23T07:37:46+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6533] Re: Question about the behavior of write attributes in blocks

Thank you for explanation - the output of "x".inspect() is

>>"x"

which made me assume that Strings are implemented as singletons  (which
doesn't make much sense in the presence of a replace() method).

I was hoping to be able to write
***********
x =  [1,2,3]
x.each { |i|    i+= 1  }
p x
****************
which has the output

>>[1, 2, 3]

and not the ``expected''

>>[2, 3, 4]

I wouldn't mind to write some thing like

*******************
x =  [1,2,3]
x.each { |i|    i.add_to 1 }
p x
**********************

but there is no such method for Fixnum and the only way I can think about
writing such a method always involves the use of the ``=()''-operator -
which means I am effectively stuck. The String Class seems to be one of the
few build in classes sporting a replace() method so I can write

***********
class String
def add_to(n)
        replace((self.to_i+n).to_s)
end
end

x =  ["1","2","3"]
x.each { |i|    i.add_to 1 }
p x

**************

This gives me the indented output

>> ["2", "3", "4"]

This is only a stop-cap measure since I really want to manipulate Arrays (or
binary trees) of Fixnum or more general any Object.

Any thoughts?
        Christoph