From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2004-12-02T23:44:08+09:00
Subject: nested defs, what if...

This is too half-baked to be an RCR, but here goes...

At the moment we cannot write

class Thingy
   def somefunc
     def newfunc
       ...
     end
   end
end

OK, fair enough, somefunc is an instance method, so what would
newfunc get defined as?  It could not be an instance method because
it might depend on variables having values which differ in another
instance.

So, my half-baked idea: let the above code be a shorthand for

class Thingy
   def somefunc
     class << self
       def newfunc
         ...
       end
     end
   end
end

This would have the [questionable] advantage that it would hide that
relatively obscure class << self syntax used in constructing
singletons, and it would be better tnan passing a string to instance
eval because it would get syntax highlighted by the editor.

It is not legal now, so old code would not break.

So, now I'll push this idea out and see if it sinks...

         Hugh