Whither SmallScript? (was Re: Integer micro-benchmarks)

[Johann Hibschman]

Steven D Majewski writes:

>> class Foo < Bar
>> def myMethod
>> File.new ("test.dat", "w") { |f| 
>> f.puts "Hello world!"
>> }
>> end
>> end

> What do the vertical bars around the f  ("|f|") above indicate ? 

That indicates that the block takes one argument, which is named "f".

In Python, this would be:

def File_new (filename, func_to_call):
  try:
    file_obj = open (filename, 'w')
    func_to_call (file_obj)
  finally:
    file_obj.close()

def block_function (f):   # i.e. this is what that |f| means...
  f.write ("Hello, world!\n")

File_new ("test.dat", block_function)


The real difference here is that the file object "f" is closed upon
exit from File_new, even if block_function stashed a reference to "f"
somewhere else.  That's probably not that important; this is a case
where Python's reference-counting does the right thing, and where
garbage collection has a slightly harder time.


> ( Maybe it's those extra non alphanumeric operator looking chars
> that make folks think of Perl -- even if they are used differently, 
> to someone that doesn't read Ruby, it looks like more "line noise".)

Parts of it are icky, but it's not as bad as it seems at first glance.
The '$' only appears on global variables, while '@' is a shortcut for
"self.", which I don't mind having.  "sqrt(@b**2 - 4*@a*@c)" is a bit
more readable for me than "sqrt(self.b**2 - 4*self.a*self.c)".

Anyway, I like Ruby.  I don't like it enough to recode all of my
existing python modules in Ruby, but I do like it enough to keep
playing with it.


-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu