On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 12:20 AM, Curt Hagenlocher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> However, virtual calls from a C# application back into IronRuby are a
> different matter, due Ruby's dynamic nature. Here there is both a
> performance cost and a semantic cost for performing multiple lookups. The
> performance cost results from the fact that we have to check for two
> different symbol names on every CLS call to this method before we can
> identify that we need to delegate to the base class implementation. (To be
> fair, this, too could be cached, albeit with slightly greater difficulty.)
> The semantic cost is based in the confusion resulting when methods with both
> names are defined on the class. Should we call method "dispose" or method
> "Dispose"? or both?
This is a tough one, glad I do not have to make the call. Pitfalls
and trouble every way I try to think of it and type a response. :) My
gut tells me that capitalization matters, regardless of The Ruby Way,
when it comes to .NET. If you want to write a new Dispose, def
Dispose.
> Finally, as you're probably aware by now, capitalization in Ruby is not
> simply a matter of convention. In many cases, the parser actually treats
> identifiers which start with a capital letter differently than it does
> identifiers that start lower case. Now it turns out that method names are
> one of the places where Ruby doesn't draw this distinction, but I'd guess
> that many Ruby programmers look at any identifier starting with a capital
> letter and think "that's a constant".
But given the following:
def Foo
"Bar"
end
Foo()
what Ruby programmer would look at Foo and still think it is a
constant? Of course, if I would have made it lowercase, the
parentheses would not be necessary. My point is that the parentheses
tell the reader that it is not a constant, but a method. Is there a
situation where Foo could appear legally, as defined above, without
parentheses and be confused for a constant?
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