Common enough to include it? - Squeak-dev

22 Jan 2008

      Hi there,
I've found a couple of simple but nice conveniences in collections:
A) To be able to do things like:

    	persons collectAspect: #surname
collectAspect: aSymbol
    "Collects the element's answer to aSymbol"
    ^ self collect:[:each| each perform: aSymbol]
B) To be able to do things like:
1 to: 12 collect:[:i| (Month nameOfMonth: i) asString ]
to: stop collect: aBlock 
    "Evaluate aBlock and adds it's answer to results 
    for each element of the interval (self to: stop by: 1)."
    | nextValue results |
    nextValue _ self.
    results := OrderedCollection new.
    [nextValue <= stop]
    	whileTrue: 
    		[results add: (aBlock value: nextValue).
    		nextValue _ nextValue + 1].
    ^ results
Maybe they are universal enough to include in base?
cheers,

Sebastian Sastre
PS: I'm proposing to use this #collectAspect: in the very same way of #pluck
as you can found it in Prototype enumerable, a kind of collection
abstraction for javascript.