From: Chris Pine <nemo@...>
Date: 2003-04-25T08:01:09+09:00
Subject: Re: How to call an object instance's method?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Thomas" <dave@pragprog.com>

But then again there's

    irb(main):007:0> -100.div(2+4).abs
    => 17
    irb(main):008:0> -100.div (2+4).abs
    => -17
----------------------------

Yuck!!  This is what's wrong with significant whitespace.  We are never
going to hear the end of the complaints from new users, and maybe not from
the rest of us, either.

I also wonder if people are going to think of this as "whitespace as syntax"
or if they will think of it as "Ruby forces me to code in this certain
style".

I would personally prefer the end of poetry mode (which I do enjoy) to this.


----------------------------
So, if we have to have significant whitespace, then I think the rules as
they stand now are a good compromise.

However... I'm not at all convinced that whitespace should be
significant. Personally, I'd go with /<method>\s*(/ == /method(/ and
drop the cleverness: there is a lot of scope for confusion otherwise.
----------------------------

Newlines have always been significant whitespace... did you mean them, too?
(I don't like *any* significant whitespace except as token separators.)

Yes, many of us agree; but there's no getting over the fact that this really
bugs matz:

  puts (a+b).abs
  (puts(a+b)).abs


Chris