From: "Aleksi Niemelä" <zak@...>
Date: 2001-02-05T23:29:31+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:10373] Re: Nested modules and classes?

On Sun, 4 Feb 2001, Guy N. Hurst wrote:

> "Hal E. Fulton" wrote:
> > ...
> > Also, I don't really remember seeing any discussion
> > here of nested classes... though apparently they
> > exist. Are they ever Really Useful or just a mild
> > curiosity?
> > 
> 
> I have not yet seen an answer to this question, and
> I am also interested in understanding this.
> 
> I find nested modules and nested classes,
> as well as nested classes inside nested modules.
> 
> Nowhere have I seen this documented, yet I see it
> used.  What is the scoop?

Nested modules are definitely useful as nested namespaces.

Nested classes are not that useful in my experience. In Java you would
use them for a substitute for blocks (procs) or (not so) anonymous
routines. In Ruby they could be used in a same way, but as we have
blocks already there's hardly any need for them used in that way.

There's good use for nested classes. If you need a class carrying some
data and methods, but feel that it's not important enough for the
others to use or know about it, it might be beneficial to "localize"
the definition, thus place it inside and near the code which uses it.

    - Aleksi


  module MyPackage

    module InnerPackage

      class TheWorker

        def initialize(foo)
          @foo = WorkersHelper.new(foo)
        end

        def foo
          @foo.calculate
        end

        class WorkersHelper
          def initialize(value)
            @value = value
          end
          def calculate
            @value ** 2
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end

  puts MyPackage::InnerPackage::TheWorker.new(10).foo