In article <20030719060149.GA2247 / math.umd.edu>,
Daniel Carrera  <dcarrera / math.umd.edu> wrote:
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>I don't know if there's a good reason for it, but I think it'd be cool if 
>Ruby had it.
>
>On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 02:58:51PM +0900, Kurt M. Dresner wrote:
>> When I learned python I was overjoyed that I could evaluate 1 < 2 < 3
>> and get "true".  I just realized that you can't do that in Ruby.  Is
>> there a reason why?  Is it good?  I know I can use "between", but
>> still...
>> 


I can see how it would be cool, however:

  1 < 2     #this gives a value of true
  1 < 2 < 3 #this calls the '<(3)' method on true

It essentially looks like:
  (true) < 3

Which is meaningless.

to do this you've got to somehow change the parser so that for the special cases of 
<,>,<=,>=  you instead call the method on the middle value in the chain of thee values.
Or you've got to somehow make '1 < 2' return 2 instead of/or in addition to true.
Seems problematic and could very likely break things.

  2.between?(1,3)
May not look as pretty, but works fine without potential parser headaches.

Phil