Sybren Stuvel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: [...] > - What I was told from a professor in formal languages, which is > that there is no formal definition of the Ruby language. That's > enough for me to not use it. [...]
So you're not using Python either? Probably I don't understand what you're getting at, but the Python language reference had big gaps in it last time I looked (though Fredrik Lundh has been working on updated documentation -- I'm sure he'll do a great job). Lots of features were just not in there. Certainly lots of details e.g. regarding the various special method protocols (especially when it comes to builtin types) are not documented. ISTR the core maintainers of CPython aren't even that worried about the grammar productions listed in the reference manual being 100% accurate. CPython and Jython (ignoring the fact that Jython's still on 2.1) have some fairly significant differences in various details of the language. No doubt IronPython will too. Of course, this is not something unique to Python, and I guess Python does very well in comparison, when it comes to actual practice. The fact that "open classes" are apparently thought to be a good thing in Ruby puzzles (and worries) me. John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
