First, Michael, the original pull
request<https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/5329>was opened by
@clifton, whose app was broken by this change.

Second, to lay out the question as I see it: how should predicates behave?
They can either:

   1. Always return only true or false. (Nobody's position, as far as I
   know)
   2. Generally return true/false, but may return other values instead if
   there is a good reason to, such as the ability to conveniently provide
   pertinent information (The core lib's position, my position and the
   position of basically everyone else AFAICT)
   3. Return anything for any reason or no reason, so long as results are
   truthy and falsey at the right times (fxn's position, and maybe
   tenderlove's position)

I think it's nifty that #nonzero? returns the number, or that
#world_readable? returns the permissions bits. But to have #xhr? returns 0
rather than true, for no articulable reason, as a random side-effect of the
implementation - well basically it hurts my brain.

Finally, I think the interest in this change is primarily driven by the
nature and content of the response.

When valid pull requests and attempts at compromise are closed for reasons
which are clearly unpersuasive to a significant number of rubyists, by the
one core member who created of the issue, it makes me wonder. Shouldn't we
just settle this by openly choosing the best of the 3 options above, or
some as-yet unarticulated option?

-Ben


On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Xavier Noria <[email protected]> wrote:

> I am only going to say here that I wouldn't have accepted that doc patch
> on Friday. The rationale and opinion about your proposal is independent of
> the other threads.
>
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