[REBOL] Re: IDIOMS: setting multiple words
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 9-Oct-2003 15:04
Hi, Greg,
Gregg Irwin wrote:
> Scenario:
>
> You have a number of words that you want initialized to "copy []" or
> some other value. Do you do it like this?
>
> foo: copy []
> bar: copy []
> baz: copy []
>
> Or like this?
>
> foreach word [foo bar baz][set word copy []]
>
> Or something else.
>
Occasionally I might write
foo: copy bar: copy baz: copy []
to emphasize that they're all "alike" in some way. That also scales
well if the intial value is more complex than [] (especially if it
must be computed, but that value -- or a copy -- is needed for more
than one variable).
Otherwise, I'd probably use your first case.
> Do you use a different approach for more or less words?
>
If I had more words than the above, I'd start looking at whether I
needed to redesign so that they all were parts of a larger data
structure, rather than individual words.
> Do you do things differently if you're setting words in a object?
>
When setting up an object, I usually prefer the
foo: ...
bar: ...
baz: ...
format to make the members of the object very clearly visible.
> Do you do something different based on the initial value?
>
> Is there anything else you take into consideration when you do this
> kind of thing?
>
For both of these, see above comments re scaling and number of
distinct copies.
> Thanks for playing!
>
Thanks for asking! ;-)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Neely joelDOTneelyATfedexDOTcom 901-263-4446
Counting lines of code is to software development as
counting bricks is to urban development.
