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Bug #12521

Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) about 8 years ago

There is an interesting style of programming that is *almost* really easy to do in Ruby. It would work elegantly with a simple change. A double-colon keyword argument should be available that will still leave the same argument captured by a double-splat argument if present. With this available, it becomes easy to pass down a "context" through a call chain. 

 Consider this: 

 ```ruby ``` 
 def controller name::, **context 
   … 
   log_then_render something:, name:, **context 
 end 

 def log_then_render **context 
   log context 
   complex_logic_then_render **context 
 end 

 def complex_logic_then_render name::, **context 
 … 
 Bunch of further calls 

 def render name::, something::, **context 
   … 
 end 
 ``` 

 Now assume I decide render needs a foo argument, that I obtain in my controller. The only functions that are aware of or have any need for the argument are controller and render. With functions written in this style, I only need to modify the two functions that need to know about the argument: 

 ```ruby ``` 
 def controller name::, **context 
   … 
   log_then_render something:, name:, foo: foo_value, **context 
 end 

 … no changes … 

 def render name::, something::, foo:: **context 
   … now use foo … 
 end 
 ``` 

 This is, I accept, unusual. I've not seen a language that offers this sort of feature (I call them, for various reason I don't have time to go into now, FREST functions). I can basically implement this now with a decorator, but it's a little ugly and slow. 

 It just occurred to me that an alternative would be a triple-splat final argument (or some such) that gathers all the keywords. 

 There is a related problem with the way double-splat and regular keyword arguments interact that should be fixed anyway.

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