From: Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@...>
Date: 2005-04-19T23:37:31+09:00
Subject: Re: - E03c - The Ruby Object Model (Revised Documentation)

Ilias Lazaridis <ilias@lazaridis.com> writes:

> Jim Weirich wrote:
>> On Tuesday 19 April 2005 12:59 am, Ilias Lazaridis wrote:
>> 
>>>>In this case it returns nil because Object does not have a superclass,
>>>>i.e. it does not inherit from anything.
>>>
>>>In context of an Language Object Model:
>>>Object inherits from "nil".
>> Nothing can inherit from nil, for nil is not an instance of
>> Class... as demonstrated below.
>
> you reverse things.
>
>>>>class NilSubClass < nil; end
>> TypeError: superclass must be a Class (NilClass given)
>> 	from (irb):10
>
> this is irrelevant.
>
>> In the context of the Ruby Object Model, Object has not superclass
>> and does not inherit from anything.
>
> it inherits from nothing, which is represented by "nil", which is a
> living' object, which is an instance of class NilClass, which inherits
> from Object.

Dude, you drive me crazy.

~ruby/object.c:

    rb_cObject = boot_defclass("Object", 0);
    rb_cModule = boot_defclass("Module", rb_cObject);
    rb_cClass =  boot_defclass("Class",  rb_cModule);

as you can see Object inherits from a NULL pointer, that is:
It doesn't inherit from anything.  Nada.

A NULL pointer is not nil, as you can see in ~ruby/ruby.h:

    #define Qnil   4

Believe it or not, but STFU,
-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen@gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org