From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2003-07-10T00:32:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Code Snippet: Array.shuffle

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 12:16:59AM +0900, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:
> Anyway, this is yet another case of significant spaces in Ruby:
> 
> >> class << Array
> >>   alias_method :_old_, :[];
> ?>   def [](*a)
> >>     puts "Array.[]"
> >>     _old_(*a)
> >>   end
> >> end
> => nil
> >> Array[1,2,3]
> Array.[]
> => [1, 2, 3]
> >> Array [1,2,3]
> => [1, 2, 3]

Ah, I see:  foo[bar]     =>    foo.[] (bar)
            foo [bar]    =>    foo( [bar] )

Yuk. This exists in 1.6.8. I guess it mirrors Matz's change introduced for
1.8:
            foo(a+b).c     =>    ( foo(a+b) ).c
            foo (a+b).c    =>    foo( (a+b).c )

As for the semicolon, it seems that irb does not play nicely with unusual
symbols:

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> :ok
=> :ok
irb(main):002:0> :[]
irb(main):003:0* puts "oops"
oops
=> nil
irb(main):004:0> 

Cheers,

Brian.