From: David King Landrith <dlandrith@...>
Date: 2004-04-03T07:31:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Variable names

Now that's helpful.  Thx.

On Apr 2, 2004, at 5:18 PM, Dave Thomas wrote:

>
> On Apr 2, 2004, at 16:01, David King Landrith wrote:
>
>> Replies like this make this list next to useless.
>
> I'm sorry you felt like that: that certainly wasn't my intent. I was 
> simply trying to point out what others have said: the receiver of a 
> message is an object, not a variable, and it isn't always possible to 
> determine an appropriate variable name to use from within a receiver.
>
> Have you considered changing your approach slightly? Rather than 
> making it assertion-based, you could implement it more like cast-style 
> checking:
>
>   def delete_file(str)
>      name = cast(:str, String)
>      # ...
>
> The 'cast' method could then verify its its first parameter was a 
> kind_of second parameter, and would have the name lying around if it 
> needed to report an error.
>
> The interpreter takes this kind of approach when ensuring that 
> parameters have the right behavior. In fact, it goes one better, 
> supplying the name of a conversion method to use if the object isn't 
> of the required type:
>
>    name = cast(:str, String, :to_str)
>
> You could also do this, making the third parameter optional.
>
> However, I still question whether this is all worthwhile... :)
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Dave
>
>
>
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David King Landrith
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