From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2004-01-24T12:44:54+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby/Extensions v0.3 released

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:13:35 +0900, T. Onoma wrote:
> On Saturday 24 January 2004 12:58 am, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
>> Those methods make sense only in very specific cases.  They assume you
>> want +nil+ to be like a valid string, integer, array, etc.  That's an
>> assumption I (almost) never want to make in my code.
....
> anyway, i think you've answered my question. Ruby/Extensions is intended
> as a restricted set of approved inclusions rather than an open collection
> of acceptable inclusions. that's fine. i just wanted to be clear on the
> goals of the project.

I don't think that's what Gavin said at all. I don't particularly consider 
your additions to NilClass to be "acceptable." I certainly treat nil as a 
non-value, not an empty value. If I think that I might get a nil value, I 
*always* test for #nil?. It might be okay to have NilClass#to_s (or is it 
#to_str) return '' (nil-string), but I personally don't ever rely on the 
NilClass#to_a or NilClass#to_i behaviours.

-austin
--
austin ziegler    * austin@halostatue.ca * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2004.01.23
                                         * 22.41.00