Hi --

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Robert Mannl wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I'm more or less an amateur programmer, but I have fallen in love with Ruby.

Welcome!

> I have an improvement idea for Ruby - I don't know if this is the best place 
> to post this, but I thought it might spark some discussion about whether 
> adding this "feature" would be healthy for the language or not.
>
> Let's suppose we have a method called: "some_method?". Why not allow writing 
> ternary operator expressions like this:
>
> some_method? a : b
>
> instead of
>
> some_method? ? a : b
>
>
>
>
> It feels way more natural,

I imagine it would be a nightmare to parse, for Ruby and for the human
eye.

   if x? 1 : 2; end

Is that:

   if x?(1) then 2; end

or

   if x? ? true : true; end

etc.  (Not great examples, I know, but they indicate how vexed the ?
and : could get.)

I also think the two ?'s in question, though both ?'s, are really
semantically quite distinct.

There's always 'if' :-)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack / wobblini.net