Issue #12902 has been updated by Akira Tanaka.

Status changed from Open to Feedback

I think [].sum should return 0.
Returning 0 is better than nil because programmers don't need to treat empty array specially.
This behavior is different with Enumerable#reduce which returns nil for empty array.

Also, string summation using Enumerable#sum is not good idea because it is slow.
String#join is faster.
So, we should not encourage Enumerable#sum for string summation.


----------------------------------------
Feature #12902: How about Enumerable#sum uses initial value rather than 0 as default?
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12902#change-61268

* Author: Aaron Lasseigne
* Status: Feedback
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: 
----------------------------------------
In https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12217#note-3, Akira Tanaka, mentions that the default argument to sum is 0. This creates problems with non-numeric summations (e.g. strings). This would make the method more flexible. It also makes it behave more like `reduce`. I think using the initial value in the enumerable is less surprising than using 0.



-- 
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Unsubscribe: <mailto:ruby-core-request / ruby-lang.org?subject=unsubscribe>
<http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-core>