Feature #5352
closedHow about using <> to represent Here Document?
Description
"<<" is a frequently used method in text manipulation. Meanwhile, it's also the beginning token of a here-document.
Sometimes it may be confusing to newbies.
Unlike Perl, in which "<>" is a very very frequently used operator to read lines from a filehandle, in Ruby, "<>" has no meaning. So I think it can be used to represent Here Document, so as to reduce the possibility of misunderstanding method "<<" and here-document token "<<". And In my opinion, <> is more clear than <<, because it looks like kind of brackets.
For example,
str = <SECT1>.upcase + <SECT2>.downcase
aaaaaa
SECT1
XXXXXX
SECT2
may be clearer than:
str = <<SECT1.upcase + <<SECT2.downcase
Updated by duerst (Martin Dürst) about 13 years ago
If anything is done in this direction, I'd prefer
str = <>SECT1.upcase + <>SECT2.downcase
over
str = <SECT1>.upcase + <SECT2>.downcase
It seems to stick out much better.
Updated by yeban (Anurag Priyam) about 13 years ago
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:08 AM, Martin Dürst duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp wrote:
[...]
If anything is done in this direction, I'd prefer
 str
Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) about 13 years ago
Joey Zhou wrote:
Unlike Perl, in which "<>" is a very very frequently used operator to read lines from a filehandle, in Ruby, "<>" has no meaning. So I think it can be used to represent Here Document, so as to reduce the possibility of misunderstanding method "<<" and here-document token "<<". And In my opinion, <> is more clear than <<, because it looks like kind of brackets.
I'm somewhat negative.
It looks like Perl's "<>" but is pretty different, so I'm afraid that it would be also confusing.
Updated by yimutang (Joey Zhou) about 13 years ago
Nobuyoshi Nakada wrote:
I'm somewhat negative.
It looks like Perl's "<>" but is pretty different, so I'm afraid that it would be also confusing.
There are a few things different in Ruby and Perl.
$foo is not a scalar, @bar is not an array, %w is not a hash
"re = /pattern/" in Ruby means assigning a regexp to re, but in Perl "$re = /pattern/" means "$re = $_ =~ /pattern/"...
So I think the difference is not a problem, some differences already exist.
"<<" of Perl has two meanings: shifting bits and here document. One is for the integers and the other is for the string, maybe leading to less confusing. However, in Ruby, "<<" is instance method of String and IO/File, and here document is also string, the probability of confusing is larger, I'm afraid.
Updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 12 years ago
- Status changed from Open to Assigned
- Assignee set to matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Updated by matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) over 6 years ago
- Status changed from Assigned to Rejected
Rejected. I don't want to change the basic syntax (without major benefit). Besides that, I want to keep <>
for future syntax extension.
Matz.