From: Elias Athanasopoulos <elathan@...>
Date: 2004-03-14T01:16:09+09:00
Subject: Re: long string arguments

On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 11:40:54PM +0900, Thomas Fini Hansen wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 09:21:27PM +0900, Elias Athanasopoulos wrote:
> > I would like to redirect large chunks of text to a specific
> > resource (file, stderr, etc). I thought that the code below
> > would do my job:
> > 
> > def |>(s)
> >     myputs %Q|#{s}
> > end
> > 
> > def <|
> >     |
> > end
> 
> Well, that doesn't work for a number of reasons. For starters it
> should basically quote "\nend\n...". And I don't think <| and |> are
> valid names...

Yes. Actually I am aware of why this produces syntax errors. It was
easier to paste it as an idea instead of describing what I was looking
for. :-)

> eRuby basically replace "%>anything<%" with "puts
> 'anything'". Everything else is left as is.

Does something like CPP exist in Ruby? I.e. a way to define some symbols
that expand during the code. In a C-ish way:

#define <% myputs %Q|
#define %> |

> Depends on what you're trying to do. If you just want chucks of text
> in your code:
> 
> puts <<EOF
> something here...
> EOF

I produce chunks of text in various places in my program and I like an 
interface such as the one eruby uses. Currently, the closest I can get is:

    myputs %Q|
                ...
                ...
            |
            
It would be nice if I could substitute the above with 2 distinct Object's 
operators. 

> If you want eRuby behaviour.. Why not just use eRuby? I've used it as
> templating for emails.

I don't want to increase my project's depedencies.

Regards,
-- 
University of Athens			I bet the human brain 
Physics Department				is a kludge --Marvin Minsky