It occurs to me that since RubyGems uses ~> as a recognized version constraint operator (along with >, <, >= and <=) it would be nice if Ruby supported it as a valid method. Ultimately RubyGems could use the new method in it's code. But more generally it could be useful too, as it has a couple of nice features, namely the '~' part can be thought of as meaning "approximate", and as a whole it looks like a pointing arrow.
This syntax would bring ambiguity.
Consider "0.~>1". This can parse as:
0.send("~>", 1)
as well as:
0.send("~") > 1
. So I close this ticket as Rejected.
There are some incomplete or arguable points in this proposal.
Doesn't Ruby define builtin Integer#~> ? And what's the behavior?
If Ruby does not provide Integer#~>, this feature will encourage
users to define their own Integer#~>, which will bring collision
and confusion.
An inversion method <~ will be needed. This also brings additional
parsing ambiguities.
The looking is awkward with Japanese font, because a tilde character
is printed as superscript ;-)
Updated by