ara.t.howard / noaa.gov wrote:
> On Fri, 31 Mar 2006, Christian Neukirchen wrote:
> > if a.kind_of? Boolean
> >
> > case y
> >  when Integer
> >  when Boolean
> > end

What kind of scenarios would you want to use such a construct? It seems
to me not very rubyish to be switching based on the class of an object.
As I understand it, the more conventional way to deal with potentially
diverse argument types is to use the respond_to? method. This keeps the
door open for duck typing.

> another thing a real Boolean class could give is a 'maybe' obj such that
....
> although i can't think of anything attm to do with this it would undoubtably
> lead to some nice logical constructs that more closely parallel the way we
> think.

It sounds like you're talking about a sort of restricted fuzzy logic,
which is very cool, but is not appropriate for the core of a general
purpose language. Considering that every expression can be interpreted
in a boolean context, what would a maybe value do? Either behavior
seems wrong.