From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2000-12-08T06:06:22+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6914] Re: array of hashes

"Joseph McDonald" <joe@vpop.net> writes:

> That would be great!  It would also be nice if fixnums and strings
> sprang into existence as not nil, so you could start using them
> right away (in a loop for instance).  good defaults would be "0" and ""

I don't believe that Fixnums and Strings have any defaults. However,
in Ruby, variables, which reference objects, default to nil when they
have not yet been assigned a value.

I believe that old versions of Ruby had semantics so that

   nil +  <something>

tended to work:

  nil + "hi" => "hi"
  nil + 12   => 12

I think it was removed because it hid a number of typing errors:

  10.times { |count|
     fred(coumt + 10)
  }

You can always add the behavior back by adding the appropriate methods 
to nill

   def nil.+(x)
     x
   end

   nil + "hi"   #=> "hi"
   nil + 12     #=> 12


Regards


Dave