Simon Strandgaard <neoneye / adslhome.dk> wrote in message news:<200410241718.48182.neoneye / adslhome.dk>...
> problem:
> I often use a range to extract the beginning/ending letters.. 
> like this   "string"[-4, 4]   #-> "ring"
> It feels somewhat redundant that I have to type the length 2 times.
> A very simple operation that easily can confuse people if they
> are browsing through others code.. this is a place where one easily can
> introduce off-by-one errors.
> 
> 
> motivation:
> When looking at the Array class I see that it has #first and #last
> methods.. just for this purpose, to extract the sub-array either
> from the beginning or the ending.
> Why not also use #first and #last on String ?

Why not just turn String into an Array of characters?  It feels like
that's how everyone wants a String to behave anyway.

Dan