On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Ben Tilly wrote:

> David Alan Black <dblack / candle.superlink.net> wrote:
> >
> I was talking about your hack to have a map return multiple
> values, map to anon arrays then flatten.  That hack will
> not work on all data structures because flatten is
> recursive.  Your original map_with_indices didn't have
> that problem.

I'm totally lost now.  As far as I can tell, this example:

> >[1, [], [3,4,[]]] .map do |e| [e.inspect, "hello"]  end .flatten
> >
> >  => ["1", "hello", "[]", "hello", "[3, 4, []]", "hello"]

showed that the business of mapping 2-for-one (using the flatten
"hack") *does* work with multidimensional arrays.  Can you write
a little example showing a case where things get excessively
flattened?  

> >   I don't think that Ruby is list-oriented or that list-oriented ways
> >   of thinking are a good fit for it.  Having lists with variable numbers
> >   of arguments is not part of the basic design and I don't think should
> >   be hacked on top when it doesn't fit conceptually.
> >
> >Now, come on Ben, admit it -- there's just a *little* bit of
> >willingness to say what is and is not Ruby-esque creeping in around
> >the edges, isn't there? :-)
> >
> Willingness does not equal ability.  I was putting out a guess
> based on an impression.  The fact that you (with more
> experience) didn't think my impression was obvious suggests that
> I am missing something.

Heavens -- I'm not particularly experienced.  I'm a Book Baby (late 
October)  :-)  I'm a bit lost on this part of the thread too.  But
it's OK.  


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack / candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav / shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav