From: Dave Thomas <dave@...>
Date: 2004-06-26T00:57:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Is it considered Harmful?


On Jun 25, 2004, at 10:48, Sean O'Dell wrote:
>>  If you think that the possiblity to crash ruby is not a technical 
>> reason,
>>  then you are right it don't exist solid technical reason.
>
> You're wrong on that.  It wouldn't crash Ruby to change the class of an
> object.  Objects already change their class when you turn them into
> singletons.
> Changing it to any class of your choosing would be even simpler,
> since creating a singleton involves inheriting all the old class 
> methods;
> changing a class wouldn't require all that work.

Singletons are effectively subclasses of the original.

irb(main):001:0> a = /cat/
=> /cat/
irb(main):002:0> def a.speak; "meiow"; end
irb(main):005:0> a.speak
=> "meiow"
irb(main):006:0> a.class
=> Regexp

How would you handle
     a = /cat/
     a.class = File
     a.read

It's a brave man that calls Guy 'wrong,' so I'm looking forward to 
seeing your implementation of this.

Cheers

Dave