Rails spinoffs - Jul 2006 - patch proposition: more syntactic sugar with $w ?

Hi All,

After reading Justin''s last post  
(http://encytemedia.com/blog/articles/2006/07/05/writing-custom- 
iterators-for-prototype) where he uses the following piece of code:

var tags = "div p span ul ol li span form input select textarea h1 h2  
h3 h4 h5 h6 dl dt em strong";

$A(tags.split('' '')).each(function(tag) {
    //do something
  });

I came to realize that Prototype could possibly do with a three liner  
add-on for even more syntactic sugar:

function $w(string){
   return string.split(/\s+/);
}

which just is a javascript implementation of the ruby flavored %w{ ant  
bee cat dog elk } and which would enable, for example, the following:

$w("ant bee cat dog elk ").each(function(animal){
   alert(animal);
});

What do you think? Is it overkill or should I just go ahead and post an  
enhancement patch?

Any suggestions welcomed...

Regards,

Tobie

Actually, something like this would be better:

function $w(string){
   string = string.strip();
   return string ? string.split(/\s+/) : [];
}

regards,

Tobie