On 2009-11-04, Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen / marnen.org> wrote:
> I believe you are quite wrong.  If a destructive function like gsub! can 
> be implemented as a method, then I see no reason that +=, |=, or postfix 
> ++ couldn't be.

gsub! is implemented as a method on objects which contain data.  ++ would
have to be implemented as a method on objects which ARE their data -- which
have no distinction between the object and its "contents".

gsub! can work because somewhere inside the object there is a hunk of storage
which is separate from the object itself.  Fixnum has no such storage to
refer to.

-s
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