On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, ara.t.howard wrote: > On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 17:48, David A. Black <dblack / rubypal.com> wrote: >> that does not imply that these should be >> typed out by hand anew every time they're going to be used. > > ?? I was responding to your comments about this being re-invented repeatedly, which is not what I had been recommending. I wanted to make that clear. > the OP simply asked why a useful idiom wasn't supported in core, which > includes it's libraries. he very clearly asked for "the best solution > in use." the subsequent posts responded as to why we shouldn't change > the language, which was never suggested, and a critique of the of the > example code, which was never asked for. > > the implication was quite clear: that there isn't a best practice and > that solution should be typed out by hand since "you can make what are > essentially language-level-like constructs from a few lines of code in > Ruby" But *not* typed out by hand anew every time they're going to be used. The operative word in my statement was "anew". > honestly, if you read the thread start to finish, i do not think the > OP's question was given due consideration and i also think his intent > was co-opted into a request for a language change. The beginning of the first post is: >> I'm having trouble understanding why this isn't available from the >> Ruby core? Does core not provide an alternative / satisfactory >> implementation of this? I'm a bit puzzled by what you're saying. It would never occur to me to "co-opt" a question. But let's move on. > i'm simply requesting that the group focus on a good, concrete, > solution for a hard problem instead of simply telling people that the > issue is so easy that it's not even worth solving. > > i'd love to see some thinking about the various attempts at a complete > solution. the OP has already noted that the most common are flawed > for even moderately complex use cases, maybe the collective can narrow > in on, and even improve upon, the better ones. i've personally spent > a week or two trying to solve this problem in the general case and > have found it profoundly slippery to get right. i've already posted > my attempt at a minimal but complete solution (fattr) but would love > to hear some legitimate and thoughtful analysis of other approaches. > if a particular solution could gain some momentum as being best > practice it would a big help for the next generation of ruby > programmers - so much so that an RCR, or whatever they are called > these days, might really be in order. Coming at it from the other angle, I'd be interested in seeing more use cases -- not that there aren't some around, but most of the ones I've seen seem to lend themselves to relatively simple solutions. That probably means I haven't looked at the right ones.... David -- The Ruby training with D. Black, G. Brown, J.McAnally Compleat Jan 22-23, 2010, Tampa, FL Rubyist http://www.thecompleatrubyist.com David A. Black/Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)