From: Csaba Henk <csaba@..._for_avoiding_spam.org>
Date: 2005-04-03T22:04:42+09:00
Subject: Re: [EVALUATION] - E03 - jamLang Evaluation Case Applied to Ruby

On 2005-04-03, Ilias Lazaridis <ilias@lazaridis.com> wrote:
>>> def talker
>>>
>>>   def sayHello
>>>     puts "Hello World"
>>>   end
>>>
>>>   def sayYourName
>>>     puts @name
>>>   end
>>>
>>> end

[snip]

> but it gives me the basic idea:
>
> class Object
>    def meta() @meta ||= {} end
> end
>
> talker.sayYourName.meta[:author] = "it's just me"
> puts talker.sayYourName.meta[:author]
>=> it's just me

If you want metadata for the _function_, then it's not exactly the way
to go. 

The sayYourName method, as defined above, is a side-effecting one,
writes out @name, then returns nil, which is a unique object, without
any reference to talker. That is, it's not a possible carrier of
metainformation.

What seems to be feasible is implementing one of the following
behaviours:

 talker.meta[:sayYourName][:author] # => "it's just me"

or

 talker.method(:sayYourName).meta[:author] # => "it's just me"

or if you are on steroids, maybe

 talker.meta[:sayYourName].author

or 

 talker.method(:sayYourName).meta.author

(FYI, Object#method takes a symbol or a string, and returns the method
named thusly as an obejct.)

Csaba