From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2000-12-10T03:48:09+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6982] Re: Accessing an non-existing segment of an array

"Ben Tilly" <ben_tilly@hotmail.com> writes:

> >I guess my confusion comes from the intent of the code: why would you
> >ever _ask_ for elements outside the bounds of the array?
> >
> I have felt the convenience in Perl.  For instance:
> 
>   while (my @group = splice(@list, 0, 10)) {
>     # Do something with the group of entries
>   }
> 
> The point being to push down to the language all of the
> logic about where the boundaries of the array are.  This
> snippet for implementing paging logic would be much longer
> if I had to concern myself with logic about finding the
> boundary of the array.  Instead I just know that it will
> exit correctly, and might sometimes give me fewer elements.

I guess in this circumstance I'd be looking for an extension to #pop
or #unshift

   arr.pop(10)  -> newArray

where newArray would be nil if arr was empty, or up to 10 elements
otherwise.

But I can see your point too.

Dave