From: Dave Burt <dave@...>
Date: 2005-05-07T12:49:26+09:00
Subject: Re: object reference handle (like perl's reference to scalar)

"Austin Ziegler" <halostatue@gmail.com> contended:
> Sure, you can create a Ref class. If you look on ruby-talk archives,
> you'll see several implementations in the past three years. However,
> such an object is useless. It can't act as the object for which it
> holds the reference. It won't report as the object for which it
> holds the reference.

Why do you assert these things about any concievable Ref implementation? 
Even my Ref implementation does act as the object for which it holds the 
reference for all purposes except explicitly querying type and reference 
reassignment. Surely it's entirely conceivable to have a reference object 
whose only difference from the referenced object is that it responds to 
deref and deref=?

> (There's one case that I have in PDF::Writer where such a
> reference would be mildly useful, but the reality of what I need to
> do here is more the elimination of all instance variable use in what
> I'm trying to do. And *that* is a different beast entirely.)

I'd be interested to hear a little more about this, as you've said this is a 
sub-1% problem - it must be interesting.

Cheers,
Dave