From: Brian Palmer <brian@...>
Date: 2004-12-30T06:22:29+09:00
Subject: #send and private methods

I apologize if this has been discussed before and I missed it...

What's the rationale for having #send bypass the private status of a 
method?  For instance:

irb(main):001:0> b = Object.new
=> #<Object:0x2ae06d8>
irb(main):002:0> b.gets
NoMethodError: private method `gets' called for #<Object:0x2ae06d8>
        from (irb):2
irb(main):003:0> b.send("gets")
no!
=> "no!\n"
irb(main):004:0>

In my mind, #send should honor the visibility of a method and only allow 
calls to private methods if called like

self.send("gets")

But maybe there's a good reason for this behavior that I'm simply missing.

- Brian Palmer