From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2011-10-01T16:48:52+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:39807] Re: [Ruby 1.9 - Feature #5372][Open] Promote blank? to a core protocol

On Sep 27, 2011, at 6:52 PM, Alex Young wrote:

> Think of it like the Null Object pattern in reverse.

The Null Object is described on the C2 wiki and its related pages:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NullObject

It seems to be better than implementing Object#empty?

Can you show me a description of the opposite?

> Because the core API commonly returns nil in error cases..

Can you show some examples?  I don't seem to write nil checks very often when using core methods, but maybe I am forgetting.  I would rather improve the API to have fewer nil return values than add #empty? everywhere.

>    case thingy
>    when Blank
>      # catch-all
>    # other cases
>    end

What about:

case thingy
# other cases
else
  # catch-all
end