On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, David Alan Black wrote:

> > Eg, "pack" is in Array and "unpack" is in String. Other examples, "grep"
> > in Enumerable, "join" in Array, "split" in String, etc.
>
> But if (say) Array#join => aString is a problem, then what about
> Array.size => Fixnum?  A rhetorical question, I guess :-)  but my point
> is that, to me, it doesn't seem wrong for a method in a given class to
> return an object of another type.  Otherwise all Array methods would
> have to return arrays, which would be pretty constrictive.

I agree, these things are very useful. :)

They're still a conceptual separation though.

It would be nice if there was some way of showing the connection between
"join" and "split", "pack" and "unpack" and other related operations even
though they reside in different classes.

-- 
  spwhite / chariot.net.au