From: Dave Burt <dave@...>
Date: 2005-04-07T15:34:44+09:00
Subject: Re: [curiousity] why aren't declarations just syntactic sugar?

"Florian Gro�" <florgro@gmail.com> responded:
> Dave Burt wrote:
>
>> "MyClass do ..." looks like a syntax error to me.
>>
>> How about a Class#| for this (think set union like Array#|)?
>>
>> MyClass |= Class.new do
>> ....
>>
>> First-class methods would make implementation of something like this 
>> convenient.
>
> That would not work though as the block can not bind to the | operator.

I know that. I was thinking, "what if you could add all the methods defined 
in that anonymous class to MyClass?"

This would effectively be a way of doing multiple inheritance, and has all 
the problems associated with that. (e.g. Class.new will make a class that 
inherits from Object, and those methods would have to be "ORed" into MyClass 
as well as any explicitly defined.) So it's a bad thing.

It makes more sense if the RHS is a Module. And you can do that already, 
with mix-ins (extend, include)

I still think it's an interesting thought.

Cheers,
Dave