Hi -- On Sat, 7 Nov 2009, Tony Arcieri wrote: > On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 5:28 PM, David A. Black <dblack / rubypal.com> wrote: > >> The thing is, a method called ++ that did in-place incremention would not >> be meaningful for >> numbers (if I understand correctly that you mean it would be similar >> to succ!), and having it for other objects would probably just lead to >> more confusion. That's my hunch, at least. > > > There's no point at all if it doesn't work on numbers. It depends how you define "work" :-) I'll stick with my formulation, though: in-place incrementation of a numeric is not meaningful. So if ++ is understood to be in-place incrementation (like succ!), which is how I interpreted your earlier post, then it wouldn't be meaningful for numbers. > It would require special case behavior. Application to literal numbers > would be strange. But there's certainly no reason it can't be done, and you > have one Ruby implementer on this thread attesting that it can. It seems like a lot of special-casing and strangeness, though. I'm a little bit hampered in discussing it, I guess, because I don't see what benefit it would confer in exchange for the anomaly. So I'm probably going in circles. 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)