From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2000-12-20T17:37:35+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7751] Re: Code sample for improvement

Hello --

On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Guy N. Hurst wrote:

> I looked at the other samples and decided to give this a try.  I
> figured there might be a nice way to use the Time class for this.
> Besides, there aren't 30 days in every month ;-)

True... but the lump in the carpet has to end up somewhere.  One could
also say: 2 * (1 month's worth of seconds) doesn't always equal 2
months 3 days, and so forth:

   time = 2678400
   (1..5).each do |i|
     x = time * i
     puts "#{x} seconds: #{x.to_time}"
   end

   2678400 seconds: 1 month
   5356800 seconds: 2 months 3 days
   8035200 seconds: 3 months 3 days
   10713600 seconds: 4 months 4 days 1 hour
   13392000 seconds: 5 months 4 days 1 hour

Obviously these make sense with regard to 1/1/1970, but for a given
case it may be more relevant or informative to average things out.

(Or did your ';-)' cover all this? :-)

> In making this code, I am taking advantage of the fact that the
> English words, including your accepted abbreviations "min" and
> "sec", match the methods I will use from the Time class, which I use
> as my workhorse.  No tables are needed. Since this seems like a
> useful method, I added it into the String and Integer classes.

> Personally, I think this better reflects the Ruby way to do things.

A bit of a conversation-stopper... :-)  but anyway: doesn't it depend
on what "things" one is doing?  Your approach is a great way to
translate seconds into an English representation of time since
1/1/1970.  But I think there are legitimate reasons that one might
interpret the seconds-to-English task differently.  (By the way, I'm
not specifically defending my own version of this -- I have nothing
riding on that, nor any conviction that it couldn't be improved upon.)

> I really like Ruby  :-)

Hey, I can beat that -- I even like the Ruby discussion list :-)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav