From: Nicholas Seckar <nseckar@...>
Date: 2005-04-10T02:17:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Seven new VMs, all in a row

On Saturday 09 April 2005 12:17, Peter Suk wrote:
> Having your variables in a Hashtable is something I've heard of as a
> means of giving Java objects more reflective & dynamic capabilities.

It is possible for Ruby objects to have a dynamic set of attributes. How do 
you propose to handle calling instance_variable_set with random names on 
objects?

Would such an operation entail resizing every instance of that object's class? 
Or would a hidden subclass be created, as can be done for singleton methods?

Another option is to use slots for the attributes we know about and provide 
hash based fallback for those which surprise us.