characterizable¶ ↑

“Cognitive mechanisms, on this view, take mathematically characterizable inputs to deliver mathematically characterizable outputs, and qua computational devices, that is all.”

tinyurl.com/28tcrw2

It just brings some Ruby 1.9 behavior to Ruby 1.8 hashes… (from webonrails.com/2009/02/06/ruby-191-hash)

RUBY_VERSION => 1.8.6
>> hash = {:a=> 1, :b=>2, :c=>3, :d=>4}
=> {:b=>2, :c=>3, :d=>4, :a=>1}
>> hash.select{|k,v| k == :c }
=> [[:c, 3]]

RUBY_VERSION => 1.9.1
>> hash = {:a=> 1, :b=>2, :c=>3, :d=>4}
=> {:a=>1, :b=>2, :c=>3, :d=>4}
>> hash.select{|k,v| k == :c }
=> {:c=>3}

I hope these two tests show the value of BetterHash in the context of this gem…

should "not be annoying to work with characteristics on a particular instance" do
  a = SimpleAutomobile.new
  a.make = 'Nissan'
  assert_same_contents [:make], a.characteristics.effective.keys
  assert_same_contents [:make], a.characteristics.effective.select { true }.keys
end

should "not be annoying to work with characteristics hashes on a class level"
  assert_same_contents [:make, :model, :variant], SimpleAutomobile.characteristics.keys
  assert_same_contents [:make, :model, :variant], SimpleAutomobile.characteristics.select { true }.keys
end

If you didn’t have BetterHash, you wouldn’t be able to call #keys because in Ruby 1.8 Hash#select (and #reject) gives you back an Array.

It’s a hash of the characteristics at a particular time…

should "keep snapshots separately" do
  my_car = Automobile.new
  my_car.make = 'Ford'
  my_car.model_year = 1999
  snapshot = my_car.characteristics
  assert_same_contents [:make, :model_year], snapshot.effective.keys
  my_car.make = nil
  assert_same_contents [], my_car.characteristics.effective.keys           # up to date!
  assert_same_contents [:make, :model_year], snapshot.effective.keys       # frozen in time!
end

There are two important points here:

• If you call my_car.characteristics, you will always get the most recent snapshot

• If you save the output to a variable like snapshot, that snapshot won’t change

• Fork the project.

• Make your feature addition or bug fix.

• Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright © 2010 Seamus Abshere. See LICENSE for details.