From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-04-10T02:24:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Would a ':=' operator break anything?

In article <1081496723.176610.19491.nullmailer@picachu.netlab.jp>,
Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
>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.

Yes, it would require education.  

I know I personally have several classes where I have an 'assign' method:

  someobj.assign value

I know that 'assign' is not actually doing the same thing as '=', but it 
is changing some important attribute of someobj. 

Phil