Feature #16295
Updated by Dan0042 (Daniel DeLorme) almost 5 years ago
Original discussion https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/16150?next_issue_id=16147&prev_issue_id=16153#note-40 In #16150, @headius raised the following concern about `String#-@` and `String#+@`: headius (Charles Nutter) wrote: > > Not exactly, -@ and +@ makes this much simpler > > I do like the unary operators, but they also have some precedence oddities: > > ``` > >> -"foo".size > => -3 > >> (-"foo").size > => 3 > ``` > > And it doesn't work at all if you're chaining method calls: > > ``` > >> +ary.to_s.frozen? > NoMethodError: undefined method `+@' for false:FalseClass > from (irb):8 > from /usr/bin/irb:11:in `<main>' > ``` > > But you are right, instead of the explicit `dup` with possible freeze you could use `-` or `+` on the result of `to_s`. However it's still not safe to modify it since it would modify the original string too. After working for quite a while with those, I have to say I agree. They very often force to use parentheses, which is annoying, and an indication that regular methods would be preferable to unary operators. In response @matz proposed to alias them as `String#+` and `String#-` without arguments: > How about making String#+ and #- without argument behave like #+@ and #-@ respectively, so that we can write: > > ``` > "foo".-.size > ary.to_s.+.frozen? ary.+.to_s.frozen? > ``` My personal opinion is that descriptive method names would be preferable to `+/-`: > IMHO `.-` and `.+` is not very elegant. Proper method names explaining the intent would be preferable. > > - `-@` could be `dedup`, or `deduplicate`. > - `+@` could be `mutable` or `mut`.