From: "John W. Long" <ng@...>
Date: 2003-12-02T07:40:12+09:00
Subject: Re: anything disappearing from Ruby for 2.0?

Chris Uppal wrote:

>Gavri Savio Fernandez wrote:
>  
>
>>>I want to add the observation that the Perlisms in Ruby were
>>>a major (perhaps
>>>*the* major) factor that put me off the language when I
>>>looked at it a year or
>>>so ago.
>>>      
>>>
>>i mean, i can understand that you would have been turned off initially,
>>but do you still feel that they are a problem for you?
>><..snip..>
>>    
>>
>Well, it's difficult to tell whether I'd have changed my mind after a while,
>but the Perlisms *did* put me off Ruby, which is why I never did start to use
>it.
>
>I'm still interested, though, so I lurk here occasionally, and watch
>developments with hope.
>
>    -- chris
>
Why have you not looked into perl? Or even ruby for that matter? I admit 
when I first started working with ruby the $1, $2, $3 variables seemed a 
bit strange, but after working with them I can certainly say it is a 
feature that is both useful and understandable. Do you do much with 
regular expressions? This is where the perl variables shine:

phone_number = "123-456-789"
if phone_number =~ /^(\d\d\d)-(\d\d\d)-(\d\d\d\d)$/
    phone_number =  "(" + $1 + ")" + " " + $2 + "-" + $3
end
puts phone_number #-> "(123) 456-7890"

These variables are very nice, however the variables that do tend to 
obfuscate the language are the other $_, $\, $... variables. It seems 
like there should be better ways of finding out this kind of 
information. Like a program object of some kind:

$program.pid #-> 123
$program.load_path #-> [/usr...]

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com