[ioke-dev] Time and date ranges

[Ola Bini <ola.bini@gmail.com>]

Should the range operator do different things for different kinds of 
objects?

My first reaction is NO!!!!, but then I started thinking about ranges of 
dates and times. Since we are using Joda under the covers, it might make 
sense for DateTime .. to return a Joda Interval under the covers.

Would people be surprised if .. didn't return a Range? Or should we 
create an object DateTime Interval that mimics Range? What do people 
think about this?

And if .. returns a DateTime Interval in this case, might it be 
interesting to have it return other things for other kinds of objects? 
One thing I immediately see as interesting is Text.

If this:

  "foo".."fox"

Returns a Text Range - then maybe the Text Range object could mimic both 
 Range and Regexp? It kinda makes sense to be able to handle a range of 
Text as if it were a regexp.

Any other interesting ideas here?

Also the whole DateTime API would really need to TLC. It would be lovely 
to have all the things you expect from a good DateTime API in there. 
Anyone feel up to that challenge?

Cheers
--
 Ola Bini (http://olabini.com)
  Ioke - JRuby - ThoughtWorks

 "Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.