From: David Alan Black Date: 2004-05-12T09:33:53+09:00 Subject: Re: Proposal: Object#send(nil) -> self Hi -- Gavin Sinclair writes: > On Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 8:23:52 AM, David wrote: > > > 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 would say "no message" is a very special case of "a message" :-) Also, for what it's worth, the way it reads to me is "send the message nil to date_str". > I really like the message-passing paradigm, but sometimes ... you've > just gotta *not* pass a message :) There's a meta-thing going on here, though. You are passing a message -- namely "send", which to me has a very strong semantic thrust. The use of nil you're proposing feels to me like "send(no, actually pretend I didn't say that)" or something, which just doesn't seem like a good substitute for checking conditions and deciding whether sending a message (i.e., name of method to be called) is appropriate (or not) in the given situation. David -- David A. Black dblack@wobblini.net