Re: puts vs say

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: puts vs say by massa (Hermit) on Mar 01, 2009 at 12:18 UTC
ikegami, you and CountZero below got the original question wrong. The case is that, in ruby, `puts "a\n"` [download] outputs the same as `puts "a"` [download] And that is: `a` *followed by a newline. The question is: why doesn't `say` does the same?* I happen to think that autochomping-before-printing-and-then-printing-a-newline is an interesting piece of DWIMery (if one really wants an `a` followed by two newlines, `puts "a\n\n"` always works. Of course, `sub puts { local $_ = pop; chomp; push @_, $_; goto &say }` [download] should also work :-) []s, HTH, Massa (κς,πμ,πλ)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: puts vs say by ikegami (Patriarch) on Mar 01, 2009 at 18:27 UTC
You have not changed my understanding of anything. One of us hasn't made their point clearly enough, and I'm guessing it's me. Most of the time, I generate the text I output. I don't want it to be modified by my output function. When using `puts`, the only way to guarantee the text I generated will be output with a newline added is to add one myself. `say($var); # Newline added. That's why I use "say". puts($var); # Newline maybe added. Useless for text I generated. puts("$var\n"); # Newline added, but purpose defied.` [download] Yes, they are uses for `puts`, but there are for `say` too. Don't change `say`, add `puts`. But that's not to say ruby's `puts` makes sense either. Since the goal of `puts` is to prevent third parties from messing the output, it makes no sense for `puts` to chomp just one newline. It should remove all but one, adding one if necessary.	[reply] [d/l] [select]