Misc #14610: Enhance Proc docs

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: duerst (Martin Dürst)

[zverok (Victor Shepelev)]

What caught me recently while mentoring students: there is almost no "canonical" explanation about procs in Ruby's core docs: Nothing in doc/*.rdoc, and for the Proc class, documentation of what it is and what it does is pretty spartan.

I am trying to fix this by adding to Proc class header documentation.
Things added:

1. More friendly and detailed explanation of the whole concept.
2. Different methods of creating lambda and non-lambda procs.
3. Lambda semantics.
4. Conversion to proc from other objects and &.

About (3): currently, Proc docs do have an explanation about it, but there are two problems:

• it all placed in docs for predicate method #lambda? (like nobody should be interested in the concept unless uses this method);
• from my perspective, it uses pretty unfortunate wording: instead of talking about proc object semantics, it calls non-lambdas behavior "tricks", and informally tells about "procs with tricks"/"procs without tricks".

If my class documentation would be accepted, I propose to cut the explanations in #lambda? method down to a one-liner ("If the proc has lambda semantics. See class docs for an explanation about lambdas." or something like that.)

[shevegen (Robert A. Heiler)]

Agreed.

If my class documentation would be accepted,

You added a lot more examples too if I understand the patch
correctly, so I guess it is better than the old status quo.

The old status quo did not have ... a lot of examples, which
is not good. Examples help a LOT. They are often easier to
understand than any wall of text - if they work that is. :)

And there was also some more documentation added about Symbols
versus Strings in ruby by ... (I forgot the name, i am so
sorry) some ruby hacker. So I think it is quite likely that
the patch will be added.

The only remark I have to make is that I think the old intro is
a bit better.

E. g.:

"Proc objects are blocks of code that have been bound to
a set of local variables."

versus

"Proc object is an incapsulation of a block of code, that can be
stored in local variables, passed to methods and other procs and
called."

Actually I think I just noticed a typo in your patch. :)

"+Proc+ object is an incapsulation of a block of code, that can
be stored in local variables, passed to methods and other procs
and called."

The part "and called" seems a bit odd. I assume you refer to
"called in another proc"?

Anyway. The above are mostly just details; it's not as if the
old documentation is perfect either. ;)

Some other changes I'd suggest would be e. g.:

"You can tell lambda from regular proc by #lambda? instance method."

towards

"A lambda can be distinguished from a regular proc object by the #lambda? instance method. Example:"

And a single-line example.

Anyway, I agree with your statements above, so my comment should be
seen as suggestions to +1 to your patch. In general the ruby docs
are an area where a lot of things can be made better, so it's great
that people such as you help improve these parts of ruby.

[naruse (Yui NARUSE)]

• Tracker changed from Misc to Bug
• Assignee set to 13939
• Backport set to 2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN, 2.5: UNKNOWN

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Status changed from Open to Assigned

[zverok (Victor Shepelev)]

• Tracker changed from Bug to Misc
• Backport deleted (2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN, 2.5: UNKNOWN)

Added by zverok (Victor Shepelev) 9 months ago.
Updated by hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA) 4 months ago

Sorry, is it possible to have this merged before 2.6 release? What can I do for it?..

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Assignee changed from 13939 to duerst (Martin Dürst)

I'll try to have a look at it later today or tomorrow.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Status changed from Assigned to Closed

Applied in changeset trunk|r66355.

---

Enhance Proc docs [Misc #14610]

From: Victor Shepelev [e-mail]