From: Mark Hubbart <discordantus@...>
Date: 2005-05-16T10:24:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Class.forName ?

On 5/15/05, baalbek <rcs@bgoark.no> wrote:
> In Java there is a construct like this:
> 
> Class clazz = Class.forName("Person");
> 
> Person person = (Person)clazz.newInstance();
> 
> Is there something similar available for Ruby, that is, can I create a
> class on the fly only having this class' name as a string?
> 
> In other words, something like this (for Ruby):
> 
> person = Class.new("Person")
> 
> This does not work, but is there something that would work like this?

Perhaps you want:

  Person = Class.new
or
  Object.const_set "Person", Class.new

Both will create a new class named "Person". The second method will
let you use a name determined at runtime. If I understand your Java
code above, the Ruby translation would be something like this:

  klass = Object.const_set("Person", Class.new)
  
  person = klass.new

HTH,
Mark