From: "trans.  (T. Onoma)" <transami@...>
Date: 2005-01-16T22:58:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Fwd: [suby-ruby] Your all time desired fundemental Ruby mod

On Sunday 16 January 2005 07:35 am, David A. Black wrote:
| Hi --
|
| On Sun, 16 Jan 2005, trans.  (T. Onoma) wrote:
| > I'm taking a little poll.
| >
| > Let say you're Matz, but without any of the pressures of keeping up with
| > a previous version of Ruby. What one thing above all others would you
| > like to see differ about Ruby?
|
| I would be happy to see class variables (@@var) disappear.  But I
| don't like the idea of class_attr_reader and things like that.  Just
| use the existing attr_* methods, which Class objects already have just
| as much access to as other objects.  If a Class object needs its own
| state, let it keep its own state.  If it wants other objects to have
| access to it, let it give them access.

But @@vars cut upwardly across the class hierarchy, which is a bit different. 
Is that right? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

| Hand-in-hand with this, and for other reasons, I would like my
| Kernel#singleton_class RCR to be accepted :-)  I think that would make
| the whole singleton-class model enormously easier to explain and
| grasp.  Unfortunately it's still surrounded by a kind of mystique and
| mystery for many people -- which is really too bad, since it's
| actually so simple and transparent and cool.

Ruby Facets offer all of these BTW:

  require 'facet/class/cattr'

gives you #cattr_reader, #cattr_writer and #cattr_accessor. And 

  require 'facet/object/special_class'

provides #singleton_class (alias of #special_class).

T.