From: Ben Giddings <ben@...>
Date: 2003-07-17T03:14:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Other languages' features in Ruby

On Wed July 16 2003 2:08 pm, Michael Campbell wrote:
> > Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> wrote:
> > > Just put "#!/usr/local/bin/ruby -w" at the start of all your scripts. As
> > > Matz has mused before, it should have been compulsory (with an option to
> > > turn it *off*)
> >
> > It seems to me that that could be done at any point, without 'breaking'
> > anything (your code will still run; it'll just spit out warnings). What
> > are the cons?
> 
> 
> Processes calling ruby scripts as subprocesses and scraping their output
> might have to be retooled if they start getting new warnings that weren't
> there...?

So how about this: pick a letter of the alphabet that isn't used on the 
current ruby commandline.  Make it the new "run with warnings disabled" 
option.  Give it higher priority than "-w" so if both are specified then it 
runs silently rather than with warnings.  Announce that the "-w" switch is 
deprecated and that the new default will be to run with warnings enabled 
unless that switch is specified on the next major release (after 1.8).  After 
that, get rid of the "-w" commandline option.  People will then have 1 major 
release cycle to add the "run silently" option to their programs, but 
eventually the warnings will always be there unless they're turned off.

Ben