Re: Why limit class def to a constant or colon node?

On 4/3/07, Charles Oliver Nutter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Is there a historical reason why I can't do something like these:
>
> x = String
> class x; end
>
> or
>
> def x; String; end
> class x(); end
>
or any other combination of an arbitrary syntactic construct that might
>
produce a class? Was it done to simplify parsing or evaluation of classes?
>
> The reason I ask is for something in JRuby. In JRuby we can refer to
> Java classes using a long-hand syntax:
>
> java.lang.System
>
> which basically calls methods java and lang to get "Package" objects,
> and a System method to get a proxy class for the Java type. But with
> this, we can't do:
>
> class java.lang.System; end
>
> to re-open the proxy class and add utility methods.


i also had to programmatically define classes and came to the same idea.
would be a cool feature.
i went with class_eval and string evaluation to accomplish my task.
  -- henon

- Charlie
>
>