From: Avi  Bryant <avi.bryant@...>
Date: 2005-04-10T03:04:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Seven new VMs, all in a row


Nicholas Seckar wrote:
> 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.

All of these seem pretty reasonable; I expect you'd have to work really
hard to find any program in the wild that would cause a problem for any
of those approaches. (How many times does instance_variable_set get
used with a value that is *never* referenced directly as @ivar?)

It seems like these kind of details should probably be worked out in a
private mailing list; Peter, is there one set up for Alumina?  Or would
you rather get further along before opening things up to kibitzing?

Avi