From: "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@...>
Date: 2003-12-02T00:42:11+09:00
Subject: Re: anything disappearing from Ruby for 2.0?

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

> Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 23:49:32 +0900
> From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org>
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
> Subject: Re: anything disappearing from Ruby for 2.0?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> In message "Re: anything disappearing from Ruby for 2.0?"
>     on 03/12/01, Carlos <angus@quovadis.com.ar> writes:
> 
> |Hi :) Here's another idea:
> |
> |1) Make #.. a method (Integer#.. creates ranges, for example)
> |
> |2) Make a shortcut to proc {...} (maybe "&{"? Anything, I don't know)
> |
> |3) Define Proc#.. to work as a flip-flop
> |
> |4) while &{ line =~ /abc/ }..&{ line =~ /def/ }
> |
> |Not as easy as before, but almost...
> |
> |What do you think?
> 
> I like the basic idea.  the "shortcut notation" would be a key.  I
> couldn't think of a good one for years.  But someone might be able to.
> 
> 							matz.

how about extending readlines and defining an IO#[] method:

  class IO
    def readlines range = nil
      ...
    end
    def [] fixnum_or_range_of_fixnum_or_regexp
      ...
    end
  end


  lines = IO.readlines /abc/ .. /def/

  open(path) do |f|
    lines = f[ /abc/ .. /def/ ]
  end


#[] could also work as a 'seek and read' type operator.

  record = f[offset, length]

-a
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