From: tamc2@... (Tom Counsell)
Date: 2004-09-18T01:34:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Automatic class conversion / function overloading

> void foo(int a) and void foo(rational a)
> 
> Do I have to resort to
> 
> def foo(a)
>    case a
>       when Fixnum ...
>       when Rational ...
>    end
> end

As I understand it, the idiom in ruby would be to, where possible,
ignore the difference and assume that both a (rational) and a (fixnum)
respond to the methods you want to call on them ...

def increment(a) # a could be a Fixnum, Integer, Rational, Bignum
whatever
    a += 1 # Rely on the fact that they all respond to the method +
end

If classes might have different methods then you could redefine them
so that they all have the same method:

class Integer
alias :newnamefor  :oldmethod
end

Hope that helps

Tom