From: benny <linux@...>
Date: 2004-01-28T02:04:55+09:00
Subject: Re: newbee question about "missing" hash methods +, += and <<

> First of all, no class has a method "+=".  Instead this is a syntactic
> shortcut that transforms "a += b" into "a = a + b" - whatever 'a' and 'b'
> are.

ok

> 
> > I would find it intuitive if I could do something like this
> >
> > testhash = Hash.new
> > testhash << {"some key" => "some value"}
> 
> There is "update":

yes, I know, but I thought about syntactic consistency
perhaps I have an interation about differenz objects, some of them are arrays, some are hashs (and I
don't want to check it all the time)
> 
> I guess it's that Hash#update is peculiar because it depends on which hash
> is updated by the other, which is important if both Hashes share some
> keys.  

but  its quite clear: the right hash replaces the entry in the left hash with the same key, just
like update. why inventing a new method name for basically same thing?

> Apart from that Hash#+ might be a bit inefficient in situations
> where you want to update a Hash via +=.
> 

thats the samething with

	teststring = "hello"
	teststring += " boys and girls"

vs

	teststring << "boys and girls"

so why not having "<<" (without temporary object) and "+" or "+=" (with temporary object) instead of
"update"?

I'm not convinced yet.