From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-04-09T07:55:14+09:00
Subject: Re: The "!" and "?" characters.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Carrera" <dcarrera@math.umd.edu>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 5:18 PM
Subject: The "!" and "?" characters.


> Now my question:
> Does anyone know why 'def !' causes a parse error?

For one thing, it's an operator (the "not" operator).

Secondly, I don't think it's one of those operators
that can be overloaded. 

Thirdly, if you are thinking of the "!" as in compact! 
as being part of the name, I'd suggest thinking of it 
as a suffix instead. (Yes, it *is* part of the name 
in that "foo" and "foo!" and "foo?" are different 
methods. But the ! or ? can appear only at the end 
of the method name, not in the middle and certainly 
not at the beginning.

In short: It just doesn't work that way.

Hal