"you CAN teach an old dog ..." <itsme213 / hotmail.com> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:a6e48b6b.0306120851.45c29db7 / posting.google.com...
> What is the reason for the implicit block in Ruby invocations?

What's an "implicit block"?  From the wording I'd assume you mean a block
that is not explicitely mentioned and is somehow generated.  But your
example shows an explicite written block.

> Is it purely syntactic sugar, to allow things to look 'built-in'
>
>    my_func bar, baz  { ... block ... }

Hm, what do you mean by "built in"?  Do you mean that by omitting the
brackets around arguments to "my_func" it looks like a keyword?

Somehow this question reminds me on a statement that with OO languages one
can view class implementations as extensions of the language, because they
define which methods and operators one can apply to an object.  I think
this is supported by the fact, that certain methods in languages like Java
and Ruby are "built in", i.e., implemented in the interpreter.

Regards

    robert