From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-05-12T09:00:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Proposal: Object#send(nil) -> self

On Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 8:23:52 AM, David wrote:

> Hi --

> Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@soyabean.com.au> writes:

>> A quick one.  I see some sense in Object#send accepting 'nil' as the
>> message.  You send no message, you get the plain object.  Does anyone
>> agree?
>> 
>> #send is clearly useful when you want to vary the message sent to an
>> object based on some condition.  Sometimes the default condition is to
>> send no message, but that can't be coded as elegantly.
>> 
>> For example:
>> 
>>   date_colour_msg =
>>     case Date.today - date
>>     when 0 then :red
>>     when 1 then :yellow
>>     when 2..5 then :green
>>     else
>>       nil   # Default: whatever the normal colour is.
>>     end
>> 
>>   date_str = date.to_s.send(date_colour_msg)

> I don't like the special-case nature of this.  I believe send should
> send, not intercept (which is what this comes down to), its message.

I (generally) don't like special cases either, but this doesn't strike
me as such.  The way 'date_str.send(nil)' reads to me is literally
"send no message to date_str".

I really like the message-passing paradigm, but sometimes ... you've
just gotta *not* pass a message :)

Gavin