From: dblack@...
Date: 2003-08-21T20:04:23+09:00
Subject: Re: ParseDate and Time

Hi --

On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 05:00:06PM +0000, Jason Williams wrote:
> > In article <20030820142735.GA22454@mulan.thereeds.org>, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > > 	irb(main):009:0> puts Time.gm(*parsedate("1993-01-01T00:00:00Z"))
> > > 	Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 1993
> > > 	=> nil
> >
> > Ah, it seems to be that * I was missing; what does that do? (Sorry, I'm
> > new to Ruby :-)
>
> It flattens an array.

I'd quibble not with the spirit but with the wording of this -- only
because of the existence of the Array#flatten method, which does
something different:

  irb(main):010:0> a
  [1, [2, 3, [4, 5], 6, 7], 8]
  irb(main):011:0> def m(*args); args; end
  nil
  irb(main):012:0> m(a)
  [[1, [2, 3, [4, 5], 6, 7], 8]]
  irb(main):013:0> m(*a)
  [1, [2, 3, [4, 5], 6, 7], 8]
  irb(main):014:0> m(a.flatten)
  [[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]]
  irb(main):015:0> m(*a.flatten)
  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]


David

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