From: Francis Hwang <sera@...>
Date: 2004-12-01T09:58:57+09:00
Subject: Re: singleton methods : when are they not permitted?


On Nov 30, 2004, at 6:12 PM, Florian Gross wrote:
> It also seems not to be possible to directly add methods to literals 
> like this: (Not sure why -- maybe Ruby optimizes literals?)
>
> irb(main):014:0> def ("x").foo; end
> SyntaxError: compile error
> (irb):14: can't define singleton method for literals
>
> However this can be worked around trivially by using an expression 
> instead:
>
> irb(main):015:0> def (("x")).foo; end
> => nil

Errrr. So what's the difference between

def ("x").foo; end

and

def (("x")).foo; end

Why do the extra parens make the parser treat it differently? My head 
hurts.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/