From: raja@... (Raja Sooriamurthi)
Date: 2001-03-07T06:40:02+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:12184] Re: disassembling and reassembling a hash

Stephen White <spwhite@chariot.net.au> writes:

>On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Raja S. wrote:

>> I didn't want to go "downwards" in terms of creating a sub-class of Hash
>> but didn't occur to me that one could go "upwards" and create an anonymous
>> super-class!  Very nice and very clever!  Thank you.

> Why are you avoiding making a sub-class of Hash?

Primarily a personal choice (aesthetics, name space polution).  We could:
say:

  class MyHash < Hash
    ...
  end

and override #new in MyHash with delegation via #super.  But for all
practical purposes MyHash objects would be identical to Hash objects in
terms of features/functionality --- nothing more nothing less.  The only
difference being how MyHash objects were created (from an array of keys and
values).  Introducing a new class just because these objects are created
different would be gratuitous.  A creator method like Hash.make would be
better.  My personal preference would be to extend the functionality of
Hash.new .

Raja