Why doesn’t Ruby support i++ or i–​ (increment/decrement operators)?

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Here is how Matz(Yukihiro Matsumoto) explains it in an old thread:

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:02706] X++?"
    on 00/05/10, Aleksi Niemelä <[email protected]> writes:

|I got an idea from http://www.pragprog.com:8080/rubyfaq/rubyfaq-5.html#ss5.3
|and thought to try. I didn't manage to make "auto(in|de)crement" working so
|could somebody help here? Does this contain some errors or is the idea
|wrong?

  (1) ++ and -- are NOT reserved operator in Ruby.

  (2) C's increment/decrement operators are in fact hidden assignment.
      They affect variables, not objects.  You cannot accomplish
      assignment via method.  Ruby uses +=/-= operator instead.

  (3) self cannot be a target of assignment.  In addition, altering
      the value of integer 1 might cause severe confusion throughout
      the program.

                            matz.

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