From: Mark Hubbart <discordantus@...>
Date: 2005-10-20T07:42:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Integer#** weirdness

On 10/19/05, Joe Mason <joe@notcharles.ca> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 07:19:12PM +0900, Peter Vanbroekhoven wrote:
> > I was aware where the error was generated (even looked at the code), but I
> > didn't realize that it was not supposed to be loaded without being
> > required explicitly. Actually I'm not requiring it, Rubygems is (it
> > requires time.rb, which indirectly requires rational.rb). But turning off
> > Rubygems is not an option, so it would be nice if rational.rb was changed
> > per your suggestion above.
>
> For now, you could reopen Rational in your class to add a wrapper to rpower.

With the copious aliases (alii?) that are in that area, I didn't at
first think it would be so easy. But it only took one alias_method to
fix it.

You could:

require 'rational'
class Fixnum
  def rpower (other)
    me, you = other.coerce(self)
    return me**you unless me == self
    if other >= 0
      self.power!(other)
    else
      Rational.new!(self,1)**other
    end
  end
  alias_method :**, :rpower
end

This is a more compatible than the solution using #is_a?, since it
will allow a number to convert itself to an integer if possible,
instead of relying on a fixed class choice.

cheers,
Mark