From: Mark Hubbart <discord@...>
Date: 2004-04-22T03:21:09+09:00
Subject: Re: A Ruby WishList


On Apr 21, 2004, at 5:42 AM, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:

>> Auto Initialization of variables
>> When I write code like this
>
>> sum = 0
>> 10.times{|n| sum = sum + n }
>
> having sum be auto-initialized to 0 is *evil*. Should it be 0, '',
> [], {}? How would Ruby know?

Just a thought... What if there was a class:

   class Nothing
     def +(other)
       other + self
     end
     def -(other)
       other - self
     end
     #.....
     def to_int
       0
     end
     def to_str
       ""
     end
     #....
   end

basically, this would be a class that would take on the empty version 
of whatever was necessary.

This would probably only work with the basic classes, though... since 
+, -, etc can be redefined, you can't assume that obj.+() requires an 
argument of it's own kind; or that a+b == b+a, etc.

So I guess this wouldn't really wwork, after all. :)

cheers,
--Mark