From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2004-04-09T16:45:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Would a ':=' operator break anything?

Hi,

In message "Would a ':=' operator break anything?"
    on 04/04/09, Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com> writes:

|Would allowing for overloading a ':=' operator break anything? (seems kind 
|of Pascalish :)

|So the ':=' operator 'looks' close enough to assignment so that the 
|meaning is clear and it keeps me from having to do:
|
|  b.assign 42
|
|Which is how I do it currently with this class and several other classes 
|I've come up with over the years.
|
|So how about it, would allowing a ':=' operator break anything?

The point is what you want is not assignment in Ruby.  It might cause
confusion that naming ":=" something which is not an assignment.
Besides that, I may use ":=" for something different in the future,
although I have no plan now (I had thought to use it once).

							matz.