From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2000-12-04T01:33:42+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6774] Re: printing/accessing arrays and hashes

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:6769] Re: printing/accessing arrays and hashes"
    on 00/12/04, Dave Thomas <Dave@thomases.com> writes:

|> Probably Hash#fetch equivalent for Array is good answer.  What do you
|> guys think is the best name for it?  Array#get? Array#fetch?
|
|at (for the Smalltalkers out there).

Ruby already has Array#at which only gives an element, not a
subarray.

|> This is iteresting comment.  Let's discuss.  If index is out of
|> bound, what should [] return?  nil or empty array?
|
|We need to choose an underlying semantic.
|
|For me, the primitive operation here is array element indexing,
|a[]. Everything else is defined in terms of it.

<snip>

Well, it's pretty interesting (and seems to be consistent).  But it is
incompatible.  Hmm.

|ps. How did the conference go? Will anyone be posting a report?

I was happy meeting with my hero Larry Wall.  I realized how much we
alike in philosophy.  In fact, he was the original.  I think you can
see some sessions by realplayer (my conversation with Larry for
example is in bilingual).  I'll tell you the URL later.  Stay tuned.

							matz.