From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju@...>
Date: 2000-12-04T01:50:15+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6776] Re: printing/accessing arrays and hashes

> > 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).

I think that for the SmallTalkers out there, it will be called "fetch",
because it's more important to have more uniformity than fancy names.

Now, to give _warm feelings_ to SmallTalkers, add:

class Array; alias :at :fetch end
class Hash ; alias :at :fetch end

I'd suggest Array#fetch be also free of negative indices tricks.

the only problem i see with that is that there is already an #at method
that seems to do mostly the same as #[] (i haven't looked at the source).

> > 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.

define a trivial #at operation first, and then write a replacement for #[]
in Ruby, using mostly #at and #length.

matju