"Bill Kelly" <billk / cts.com> writes:

> From: "Bill Kelly" <billk / cts.com>
> Subject: Re: RCR 296: Destructive methods return self
> To: ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org (ruby-talk ML)
> Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:40:31 +0900
> Reply-To: ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org
> X-Mail-Count: 134623
>
> From: "Hal Fulton" <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com>
>>
>> I would almost suggest what I once suggested as a joke: Combine the ! and ?
>> suffixes.
>> 
>>     gsub!  returns self
>>     gsub!? returns self or nil  (yes, it looks silly)
>
> It looks a little silly, but it seems pretty straightforward
> to read and understand: "Oh, it's gsub-bang with a question."
>
> The occasions when I've cared about the flag returned by the
> bang methods has typically been associated with some conditional,
> like:
>
>   save(data) if data.gsub!?(/foo/, bar)
>
> I.e. the ? is not too far from the 'if' so maybe reduces its
> silliness slightly by giving it something to relate to visually?  :)

I actually like that. :-) I think it's the best proposal of this thead
(aside of leaving it as it is).  Bonus points for using Interrobangs
with -Ku. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang) ;-)

> Doesn't seem too heinous to me.  
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Bill

-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen / gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org