From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-06-06T09:30:29+09:00
Subject: Re: How to ducktype a Hash?

On Saturday 05 June 2004 15:01, John W. Long wrote:
> >why do you need to say 'it is hash like' ?
> >Wo'nt it be easyer to say 'I need this methods, so I'll just check
> >them' ?
> >
> >BTW, probably the simpler solution is :
> >
> >x.methods =={}.methods
>
> This is even worse than object.kind_of(Hash). The whole point of "duck
> typing" (as I understand it) is that you don't check if an object has
> certain methods. You just use them. Ruby will throw an error if there's
> a problem.

Which always sounded fine to me until I was actually exposed to this kind of 
"typing."  The problem is, the methods [] and []= are there, they just don't 
do what I need them to do.  Duck typing completely and utterly don't help, 
and Ruby has no way to tell me when an object's [] and []= are hash-like or 
something else.  My solution is going to end being something like "tagging 
all objects that I know in advance to be hash-like, and then looking for that 
tag at that particular point in my code."  That's a kludge to me.

	Sean O'Dell