Boris Glawe said:
>
> Thanks  a lot!!
>
> This is an ugly pitfall, as ruby usually grants a lot of freedom in
> layout.

I agree that in most cases Ruby grants a lot of freedom, but I don't think
this is too ugly of a pitfall. There needs to some way of indicating
positive and negative numbers, and Ruby just makes things more flexible by
making that a method. You can make your own classes that use it:

class Book
  attr_reader :name, :good
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
    @good = nil
  end

  def +@
    @good = true
  end

  def -@
    @good = false
  end

  def to_s
    "#@name is #{@good == nil ? 'unrated' : @good ? 'good' : 'bad'}"
  end
end

book = Book.new('Da Vinci Code')
puts book
+book
puts book
-book
puts book
__END__

Output:
Da Vinci Code is unrated
Da Vinci Code is good
Da Vinci Code is bad


Though it may not be all that useful in most cases.

Ryan