# Japanese Heritage of Ruby: useful by-product?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 28, 2008, 11:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167 "2008-08-28T23:51:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnpetterson)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 11:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167/1 "2008-08-28T23:51:37Z")

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Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, I just thought it was  
interesting…

After reading :

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>
> Gain technology and business knowledge and hone your skills with learning resources created and curated by O'Reilly's experts: live online training, video, books, our platform has content from 200+ of the world's best publishers.

(“Is QWERTY harming language design?”), I thought maybe Japanese Kanji  
are actually useful in programming - even in the West…they can be  
used to reduce down method names for instance…

The only ‘drawback’ I found was you cannot declare classes this way,  
without putting in a leading capital Roman letter…but for methods,  
seems to work great !

class Aæ°´

```
    def 飲
            puts "You drank the water.Mizu o nomimashita..."
    end

```

end

water=Aæ°´.new  
water.飲

(To run on ruby 1.8.x, need to : ruby -Ku )

Just thought it might be a nice way (or an absolute nightmare for  
code-maintenance, depending on how you see these things!) to reduce code

- kinda of like using icons…I guess the glaring problem for  
Westerners is actually getting the characters in there in the first  
place [I used Babel fish…😉]

Mmh…maybe Greek character ‘Lambda’ could be useful here as  
well…better than mutating ‘-\>’…🙂

Or North,South,East,West arrows for games I see people are writing …

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**Author:** ![johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnpetterson)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167/2 "2008-08-29T00:19:43Z")

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On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 2:46 PM, John Pritchard-williams  
[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Mmh…maybe Greek character ‘Lambda’ could be useful here as  
> well…better than mutating ‘-\>’…🙂

PLT Scheme lets you use “ë” instead of “lambda” in your code, e.g.  
(from the distribution):

(define (smallest? can o1 o2 o3)  
(and can  
(andmap (ë (x) (\< can x))  
(filter (ë (x) x)  
(list o1 o2 o3)))))

It was a bit disconcerting at first but now that I’ve gotten used to  
it I find it makes things more readable.

martin

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**Author:** ![johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnpetterson)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2008, 2:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167/3 "2008-08-29T02:30:43Z")

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2008/8/28 Martin DeMello [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 2:46 PM, John Pritchard-williams  
> [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > Mmh…maybe Greek character ‘Lambda’ could be useful here as  
> > well…better than mutating ‘-\>’…🙂
> 
> PLT Scheme lets you use “ë” instead of “lambda” in your code, e.g.  
> (from the distribution):

I saw this originally from Dan B., but so can Ruby 🙂

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -Ku

alias ë proc

doubler = ë { |x| x\*2 }  
p doubler[5] #=\> 10

-greg

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnpetterson)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2008, 8:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167/4 "2008-08-29T08:47:32Z")

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On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 5:46 AM, John Pritchard-williams  
[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> - kinda of like using icons…I guess the glaring problem for  
> Westerners is actually getting the characters in there in the first  
> place [I used Babel fish…😉]

I think the glaring problem for Westerners would be actually learning  
the kanji themselves. I use GNU/Linux and have SCIM installed, so  
writing stuff like 外国人のキーボードは漢字を書く事が出来ます is not at all difficult.  
Windows has an equally simple input method as well.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@johnpetterson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnpetterson)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2008, 12:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/japanese-heritage-of-ruby-useful-by-product/147167/5 "2008-08-29T00:20:18Z")

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2008/8/28 Martin DeMello [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 2:46 PM, John Pritchard-williams  
> [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > Mmh…maybe Greek character ‘Lambda’ could be useful here as  
> > well…better than mutating ‘-\>’…🙂
> 
> PLT Scheme lets you use “ë” instead of “lambda” in your code, e.g.

Also see [http://www.perlmonks.org/?node\_id=462246](http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=462246)

martin