From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2007-09-01T01:52:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Pragmas in Ruby 1.9

David Flanagan wrote:
> 2) If we need to introduce more general pragmas, I suggest overloading 
> Kernel.require.  It should behave as usual if passed a string.  But it 
> can handle pragmas if passed a hash.  Some possible examples (using Ruby 
> 1.9 hash syntax):
> 
>   require encoding: "utf-8"
>   require unsafe: "fibers"
>   require thread-model: "concurrent"
>   require version: 1.9
>   require decimal: true
>   require strict: true

If this ever happens, I hope it's first accompanied by a standardized 
mechanism for extending (without replacing) require. Already rubygems 
and rails add their own require logic, and there's complications in both 
to make sure they work right. A standard way to extend require's 
behavior programmatically without physically replacing require would 
help guarantee future require extensions don't break old ones.

- Charlie