Ruby

Hi guys,

Hi nobu :)

Also hi matz if matz reads this, and of course the rest of the core
team and everyone else.

Today on IRC, this mini-discussion happened (I show a snippet):

<apeiros> I really miss attr_query or whatever you want to name it <apeiros> which would generate a ? method too <jhass> apeiros: crystal has :P getter? <apeiros> nice 

Ok, so the language crystal has something ruby does not have.

We can't let those newcomers get away with making ruby look old
now can we!

I use ruby not crystal but I very often use methods that end
with a '?' query mark in ruby. It helps me in simple if clauses
such as:

if hash.has_key? if hash.key? if cat.is_hungry? 

(In the latter, it might be a cat of class Cat instance, with
an instance variable called @is_hungry, and when the cat is
fed with food, it is not hungry logically.)

We can generate these @ivars through attr_* right now as is
already, such as:

attr_reader :foo def foo; @foo; end attr_writer :foo def foo=(i); @foo = i; end attr_accessor :foo ^^^ Combines the above two methods into one. 

But we have no way to designate methods that end via '?'.

I do not know which API call would be nice. apeiros on
IRC suggested attr_query

I am fine with that. (The name is secondary for me, I
would like to have this feature available - what name
it would then have is not the main issue for me.)

apeiros then also suggested this syntax:

All attr_* that would end with a ? token, would be a
combination of attr_reader and also a variant of the
above that has a '?' token, so for example:

attr_reader :foo? 

Would create both a method foo() and foo?().

People who do not need this, can continue to use:

attr_reader :foo 

just fine.

So perhaps this suggestion is even better than
a new method (such as through attr_query())

(I also have added one more line from apeiros,
not sure if I understood it, but I think the
above explanation should suffice - here is the
other suggestion he did:)

apeiros> e.g. attr_reader :foo? -> foo? // attr_accessor :foo? -> foo= + foo? // all with @foo of course. and foo? returning true/false. 

Ok, that's it.

Thanks for reading!