From: Kent Dahl <kentda+news@...>
Date: 2003-09-17T23:56:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and OOP-design (question of an old "procedural person" ;)

Martin DeMello wrote:
> Kent Dahl <kentda+news@stud.ntnu.no> wrote:
>>$ ruby1.8 -v -e "p( -5.nonzero?, 5.nonzero?, 0.nonzero? )"
>>ruby 1.8.0 (2003-08-04) [i686-linux]
>>-5
>>5
>>nil
> 
> 
> *blink*
> 
> Okay, I'm officially Surprised. Seriously, I don't see this as a good
> thing - ? methods ought to be strictly boolean IMO, and not rely on the
> 'value' of true. Otherwise, some of their self-documenting nature is
> lost.

Not yet on the duck typing train, I see.

The ?-methods are still self-documenting in the sense that they tell you 
how you can use the result: as a boolean. That is a type, as in "I may 
be used in conditionals", and not a class, as quite evident by the lack 
of the Boolean common ancestor.

-- 
(\[ Kent Dahl ]/)_    _~_    _____[ http://www.pvv.org/~kentda/ ]_____/~
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( \__\_�|�_/__/ ) _)Industrial economics and technological management(
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