Really? Seriously?

I must admit, I think this is a pretty unuseful change.

I must admit, I think this is a pretty useful change. :-)

I’m not sure if this is useful or not, but isn’t this (and all the things like this) bloating the code base anyway?

Hey, they call Ruby on Rails “a little framework”, what did you expect?

<ul>
 <li><%= link_to videos.first.title, video_path(videos.first) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.second.title, video_path(videos.second) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.third.title, video_path(videos.third) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.fourth.title, video_path(videos.fourth) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.fifth.title, video_path(videos.fifth) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.sixth.title, video_path(videos.sixth) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.seventh.title, video_path(videos.seventh) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.eighth.title, video_path(videos.eighth) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.ninth.title, video_path(videos.ninth) %></li>
 <li><%= link_to videos.tenth.title, video_path(videos.tenth) %></li>
</ul>

Hey, guys, could you add helpers up to [100]? I need special helpers such as eighty_six and seventy_three too :)

We also should add method_missing to parse one_hundred_thousands_and_forty_nine to completely exclude numbers from Ruby code

So many smart and helpful people in this thread, with original comments.

Gee guys, your helpful attitude astounds me. Here’s an idea, don’t use the methods and they won’t bug you.

 def entire_app(url)
  case url
  when "/hello_world.txt" 
    "Hello WORLD!" 
  end
 end

10 useless methods，another 10 useless methods,another 10 useless methods ……

+1 for this change

Haha. I’m honored by the attention of this commit! It reminds me of the good ol’ days where we debated whether pluralization was worth it. Or whether 1.second was good. Thanks for the memories ;).

This particular patch was born from the daily work I do administrating the applications at 37signals. A lot of the support work requires going into script/console and investigating various objects. In the console, I got sick of not being able to do people.second when I had a collection and knew I needed the second record. first and last was so nice and fluid, but if I needed second or third, I had to drop back to array access. Didn’t like that, so here you go.

i completely agree with this commit, 3 of 5 my applications end with this as extension anyway.

If you needed this so much, why not stuff this into ~/.irbrc instead? Then its global to all your consoles! Personally I think that would have been a much more appreciated solution rather than stuffing it into activesupport.

I wanted ‘second’ when I’m iterating hashes. But ‘third’ to ‘tenth’ sugar doesn’t seem to taste that sweet. :)

+1 for this too. I always use Array#first and Array#last for arrays of size 2.

Doesn’t anyone else think that typing array¹ is faster than typing array.second? Surely by now it’s become natural.

I think the biggest problem with this is that when I see people.fifth in code, I won’t know what to do. Also, spotting people[4] is easier when skimming the code.

Then again, if the argument is that this was used a lot in console, it’s all good I guess.

I’ve actually also used it in code. It’s particularly useful for command parameters. Think ARGV.second, ARGV.third. But yeah, not something you’d use every day. My most common use is with the console.

Radar, you could make the same argument against the built-in first and last. They have [0] and [-1] equivalents. But the English versions read nicer. Ruby is full of stuff that merely improves on readability. I love that about the language.

I guess, this is just a diss to all the LOC counters ;)

Would anyone prefer methods like caddr?

perhaps cdaddaddr?

Nice commit :). I suggest that those second…tenth methods to be added to ActiveRecord::Base as well so we could do just Person.second.

@raganwald: http://github.com/ivey/carpark provides it

Re: LOC:

        [:second, :third, :fourth, :fifth, :sixth, :seventh, :eighth, :ninth, :tenth].each_with_index do |name, i|
            define_method(name) { self[i+1] }
        end

Et voila.

I think something like this should be included on a per-app basis, as opposed to being in core. How hard is it to just ‘cp array_stupid.rb ./lib’ for your projects?

-5 points for this, kthx.

Commits like this push me closer to Merb.

This is great, but could you please provide Japanese localization? It’s so much easier for me to use:

foo.二番目に, foo.第3, foo.第4

When I’m in the console instead of foo¹, foo²…foo[N].

Thanks, I’d really appreciate it.

@Peeja: your code will not show in the documentation.

Or you could have some fancy-fun and alias :n(st/th) for 0 to your heart’s content. Then you get people.1st people.2nd… people.100th. If you’re feeling particularly courageous, you could toss the sucker in method_missing, and be able to do people.53485th.

Though I suppose that would cause confusion, since people expect “first” to be the “0th”. Well boo to that. Start at 1.

Or, I could learn Ruby, and realize that you can’t start a method with a number.

Seriously I cant understand the console use case. Typing the brackets is for me way faster than typing a method name, even with tab completion.

These methods are pointless. So are most method added for readability (Time.now instead of Time.new?). But I believe there are more important ways to spend our time, and more valuable discussions. Just leave it.

Honestly the only arguments I can really see for being against this is the extra methods being in the Array#methods call, which I sometimes use in the console. But even then most of the time when I’m looking up a method I have a pretty good idea what its called so I usually end up doing #methods.grep /whatever/ anyways

More pointless bloat for the docs. What’s next, revamping #succ to make ‘first’.next # => ‘second’ ?

Can we get an alternate version for C users who think of arrays as a⁰ being the “zeroth,” a¹ being “first,” etc.? I’d like the choice in my code.

Sugar so sweet it makes my teeth ache.

So what do things like this do to my load time, and my memory usage. I know that there was just the commit of using :only on resources to lower memory consumption of routes. Now that we saved that memory we can fill it with other things. I believe that I read an interview with you, David, where you were asked about what is going in the rails core in the next release and you said something along the lines of, ‘It is more like; what is coming out?’ Maybe that isn’t what I heard.

It’s ten methods. I don’t understand why people get worked up over methods that are optional. Not to mention you can’t iterate using “first”, “second”, etc. So it should be very obvious that this is more or less a console utility. I think he could have stopped at “third”. Honestly, is anyone going to do this all the way up to fourth? If you are going beyond “third” there is some calculation involved where using the index would be easier.

If GitHub had a Hall of Fame, this thread would be the first entry.

@defunkt lol, and this one could be second.

@binarylogic people get worked up for two reasons: 1) it makes rails more complex 2) it widens the gap between rails and “real” ruby, and if you work with non-rails ruby quite frequently, that gap becomes really annoying.

This is awesome!! Do you think we can add in second_to_last, third_to_last… tenth_to_last??

A few times it was said that this was more for use in the console, which is a strong argument that it really shouldn’t be in the code base.

If you think Array¹, Array² aren’t readable maybe you should find a different hobby/profession.

if you cannot discern between what ruby does and what rails adds then yes I can see it being a problem…. but maybe the problem is that you don’t know ruby well enough. Rails makes lots of stuff easier, and this just adds to the list.

Personally I don’t mind access to my arrays in that fashion. It makes sense and is pretty readable.

+4 Bonus points for making it even easier for my designer to handle small bits of code.

I think we should paint it red.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING

Let the man have his cake. :-)

Good point Chris. I like your answer.

Rails 0.9 was better.

Wait, am I wrong, or do you not have to use this if you don’t want to?

I love this patch.

On the bright side, Git lets you undo commits as if they never even happened.

for the love of god, you’re all spamming my github dashboard :P

Those of you who hate this patch and want to move to another framework, go ahead. There’s 10x more about to start using Rails anyway.

Those of you who love this patch (and still love rails with it, for that matter) – do you really need to justify yet another spoonful of sugar?

@dhh – keep up the good work, I personally don’t mind if there are a few more methods I can optionally use to make my life easier

I think the kind of commit is really useful. But should it be part of framework or not, not very sure!

Why stop at ten? Why not make some dynamic methods for converting numerics to flattened strings so we can do this for all elements in the array? I for one welcome our new 30+ character representational format!

It is hard not to get excited about such a thing: hella_long_array.one_million_seven_hundred_fifty_five_thousand_two_hundred_sixty_third

Error: Unclosed “” tag.

car, cadr, caddr, cadddr, caddddr, cadddddr ..

@chrislloyd’s answer nails it.

Honestly, guys, the amount of effort you’ve expended here rivals only the penis extension thread on trac.

@defunkt: You need to add a STFU button which closes a thread and tells people to take a walk, hug their loved ones, or read a book.

cough ibtl cough

“This is awesome!! Do you think we can add in second_to_last, third_to_last… tenth_to_last??” – lol

Hi. Here is my first github comment. I love this change. It may not be “useful” in the Cartesian sense, but it does subtract some hurt. Love it!

sweet….

highscores = HighScore.first(:conditions => {:game => "Killer Instinct"})

p highscores.first 
p highscores.second
p highscores.third 
p highscores.fourth
....

I’m not going to argue against this — this is essentially, at it’s core, Rails-ish. This is the very reason I don’t use Rails, and I know there’s many others who think like me. There’s a thin line between sugar (Ruby) and bloat (Rails), and it’s useless to complain about Rails crossing it. I agree that Chris should add a feature to GitHub just so he can close this thread and we can all get on with life /=

I think some people should go back to Java, where such a crime would never be perpetrated.

@defunkt: Ok, this commit is one of the reasons I’ve come to lurve github a little more! Don’t ever put a STFU button! (Although it would be useful – to be honest :D)

Yeah. I think this is great. A great discussion, a great argument.

I read the commit logs every day, but this just makes me happy in a way I never expected.

Thankyou Github.

I suggest you also add the following methods:

second_from_last, third_from_last, fourth_from_last, fifth_from_last, sixth_from_last, seventh_from_last, eighth_from_last, ninth_from_last, and tenth_from_last.

@DHH, as you said to me earlier on Lighthouse,

“While I applaud the effort, I think this is not really don’t enough to be worth a [commit] in Rails code. If you use this a lot, I would definitely recommend making a plugin out of it, though.” -DHH : http://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/1303-scriptgenerate-library

NZKoz : these types of arguments are exactly why rails is a good framework, people are allowed to make comments on things they don’t like.

defunkt: keep it up.

I think it should be in a plugin, maybe with more other aliases

ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::PradiptasRolodex?

I got into a discussion of this over lunch one day at RubyConf. I’m reminded of George Carlin’s rant about some religious schlub not liking what he heard on the radio. “The radio has two knobs, Reverend… one turns it off, and the other changes the channel!” In other words, if you don’t like it, don’t use it.

That being said, I can’t wait for someone to add #penultimate.

It’s not about “if you don’t like it, don’t use it”. It’s about it being bloat. It’d be nice if computers could download, upload, transfer, run, and keep in memory an infinite amount of code. They can’t. There’s tons of slightly useful things you could add to Ruby that would be kinda nice, but they’d also be yet more bloat – YMB. Such things shouldn’t be added to Rails.

Wait, what am I saying? This is what Rails is all about. Thar she blows, men! Man the harpoons!

On another note, this epic thread has spawned it’s own meta-commentary: http://tr.im/19fd?stackoverflow

+ # Equal to self[10]
+ def eleventh
+   self[10]
+ end

Now it goes to eleventh.

@elliottcable Comments about comments? I love the tubes sometimes.

I think DHH is using a Danish keyboard. Typing brackets on a Danish keyboard is actually quite cumbersome. :)

http://pastie.org/317766

Joking aside, I’ve sometimes typed users.second just because my brain thought it’d work, and yes, [ and ] are a bit of a PITA to type on non-US keyboards.

Programmers should just use US keyboard layout.

@georgi: Yes they should.

While I myself use similar patches on a per-app basis, these kinds of extensions are a pure bloat to what otherwise is a great framework.

I understand that Rails is all about agile programming, but there needs to be a level of elegance and succinct quality we should not be willing to go below.

@ieure: We programmers from China also need these especially for testers: foo.第二, foo.第三, foo.第四…

What a bunch of whiny bitches! I personally vote for .second_from_last or .next_to_last as well. Readability first. Keep it up.

I was curious how many comments there were, and rather than looking through my history, I started looking for this commit in the repository. I must say that the rails directory structure is well organized. Everything’s broken down into little bits. Nice use of include.

All my arrays have length of eleven, thus this change is useless to me.

oh yeah and

%w(second third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth ninth tenth).each {|n| define_method…..

/facepalm

This should be an initializer. -1

Peeja, danski: When I saw this commit back in June, I liked about it that it didn’t involve metaprogramming. If it only spans 2–10, I find this more readable. Also good for RDoc.

I wonder what Zed has to say about this.

“kris- Commits like this push me closer to Merb.”

+1, and I wonder if Rails could just be split into a Rails-Core and a Rails-More, as well as a Rails-More-dumb_array_methods_and_other_gibberish

Let’s get Dave Thomas to give a RailsConf Keynote about how we should fork Rails for the people that don’t want convenience methods.

I find this entire section of comments fascinating … the say the least.

What’s with the redundant comments?

My only objection to this is that we already have myarray.at built into Ruby. It doesn’t start at zero if that sort of thing bothers you, it works no matter how large your array is, it’s less typing, and it doesn’t even require square brackets.

bak: Array#at is zero-indexed.

mikehale: The redundant comments are likely for RDoc.

henrik: so it is. Don’t know where that blip came from.

Hi all, I pushed ahead with this idea: http://d.hatena.ne.jp/technohippy/20081121#1227285803

@technohippy

Good god.

~/work/test_222>rails -v Rails 2.2.2 ~/work/test_222>cs Loading development environment (Rails 2.2.2) >> arr = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] >> arr.first => 1 >> arr.second => 2 >> arr.third => 3 >> arr.fourth => 4 >> arr.fifth => 5 >> arr.sixth NoMethodError: undefined method `sixth’ for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]:Array from (irb):7 >> arr.seventh NoMethodError: undefined method `seventh’ for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]:Array from (irb):8 >> arr.eighth NoMethodError: undefined method `eighth’ for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]:Array from (irb):9 >> arr.ninth NoMethodError: undefined method `ninth’ for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]:Array from (irb):10 >> arr.tenth NoMethodError: undefined method `tenth’ for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]:Array from (irb):11

why ???

ps, cs command = ./script/console

Zhang: http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/e50530ca3ab5db53ebc74314c54b62b91b932389

at least it’s readable

I really like this. What’s wrong with more readable???

dhh_dumbideas[2]

dhh_dumbideas.second

sorry: dhh_dumbideas¹

skrat, I think you want dhh_dumbideas¹ for the second item.

Oops, textile.

@skrat sorry but that is pure gold =D

Also I decree this to be the final ever comment on this topic.