From: William Morgan <wmorgan-ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-01-08T09:37:36+09:00
Subject: library method isolation

Dear gurus,

I often add utility methods to Hash, Enumerable, etc. For applications
this is fine, but for a library, I feel like I should avoid leaving such
"method detritus" around in users' namespaces.

Is there a way to extend/modify existing classes or modules only within
the context of a particular ("library") module?

My first idea had some problems:

module Library

  class Hash < ::Hash
    def extramethod
      # ...
    end
  end

  Hash.new.extramethod                  # fine
  {}.extramethod                        # problem, but I can work around
  [1,2,3].map { |x| x + 1 }.extramethod # big problem

end

How do others deal with this?

Thanks for any insight,

-- 
William <wmorgan-ruby-talk@masanjin.net>