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comp.lang.ruby

Re: elseif v. elsif ??

Yukihiro Matsumoto

3/8/2007 6:54:00 AM

Hi,

In message "Re: elseif v. elsif ??"
on Thu, 8 Mar 2007 15:00:36 +0900, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> writes:

| elseif is more correct because "else" has an E in it!
|
| elsif is more correct because it lends to correct pronunciation, while
| elseif looks like it should be pronounced "ell-safe"!
|
|Both are silly, all things considered. Both approaches are "incorrect"
|by the grammatical rules of English.

Correct or not, I chose 'elsif' as the shortest correct pronounceable
word for 'else if'.

matz.
3 Answers

Chad Perrin

3/8/2007 7:29:00 AM

0

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 03:54:10PM +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In message "Re: elseif v. elsif ??"
> on Thu, 8 Mar 2007 15:00:36 +0900, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> writes:
>
> | elseif is more correct because "else" has an E in it!
> |
> | elsif is more correct because it lends to correct pronunciation, while
> | elseif looks like it should be pronounced "ell-safe"!
> |
> |Both are silly, all things considered. Both approaches are "incorrect"
> |by the grammatical rules of English.
>
> Correct or not, I chose 'elsif' as the shortest correct pronounceable
> word for 'else if'.

. . and I'm perfectly happy with that choice. I'm sure I'd be happy
with the choice of "elseif", as well, except that I'd be slightly more
likely to introduce typos since I use elsif in Perl a lot more often
than I use elseif in PHP.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.ap... ]
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do." - McCloctnick the Lucid

John Joyce

3/8/2007 7:34:00 AM

0

be glad Mr. M didn't choose to make elsif in Japanese.
It's nothing like the English. But the way Ruby methods work by being
appended to an object does work like a lot of Japanese grammatical
endings (sans the dot of course). I can't say for sure that it has
anything to do with that choice of syntax, but it may explain why
Ruby is popular in Japan. Many structures in Japanese language are
similar to functions but the parameter list comes before the
function. Learning Japanese certainly wouldn't hurt understanding
most programming languages.

Chad Perrin

3/8/2007 10:39:00 AM

0

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 04:34:21PM +0900, John Joyce wrote:
> be glad Mr. M didn't choose to make elsif in Japanese.
> It's nothing like the English. But the way Ruby methods work by being
> appended to an object does work like a lot of Japanese grammatical
> endings (sans the dot of course). I can't say for sure that it has
> anything to do with that choice of syntax, but it may explain why
> Ruby is popular in Japan. Many structures in Japanese language are
> similar to functions but the parameter list comes before the
> function. Learning Japanese certainly wouldn't hurt understanding
> most programming languages.

I suspect the early popularity of Ruby in Japan had more to do with the
fact that it started there -- and the current popularity of Ruby in the
States has something to do with the fact that it finally spread far
enough to get noticed here.

In other words, its popularity in a given area probably relates to the
fact that it has finally been noticed there. It doesn't seem to take
much to make Ruby popular. You'd have a harder time *stopping* it from
being popular.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.ap... ]
"It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could actually
spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game." - Marvin Minsky