From: Chris Pine <cpine@...>
Date: 2004-04-05T00:45:33+09:00
Subject: Re: parent of TrueClass, FalseClass

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004 00:34:20 +0900, Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> if done from the start this would make some sort of sense.  i just
> find it a bit suprising that true and false, which are both
> representations values of truth, are not related in anyway (duck
> type, module inclusion, parent class, etc) and it is difficult
> (verbose) in ruby code to ask
>
> "is this a truth value"

How about this?

class Object
  def is_truth_value?
    true
  end
end

In other words, every object is a truth value.  Every object can go inside an 'if' statement, for example.  Boolean operators will work on any ruby object, like `x && y', and can evaluate to any ruby object.  In fact, I find myself wishing that some methods which return true or false would return more broad ranges of truth values.  For example, I'd love to see this:

if (4 <= x == y > z)
  ...
end

Chris