From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-06-04T02:39:50+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Whiteout (#34)

On Jun 3, 2005, at 11:40 AM, Dave Burt wrote:

>> 3.  When "whiteout" is required, the original code must be  
>> executed with
>> no
>>     change in functionality.
>>
>
> That means that a file that is just "require 'whiteout'" and then a  
> bunch of
> whitespace should run like the original program before it was  
> whited out.

Correct.

> Perl has something called "source filters" (see perl doco  
> "perlfilter"),
> which apply a transformation to following source code, kind of like a
> preprocessor. This would be an ideal way of dealing with this  
> situation, and
> avoid doing File.read($0).

Yeah, this is an interesting if probably evil feature.  I wasn't sure  
how feasible something like this was, or wasn't in Ruby.  I would  
like to see a source filter library for Ruby, even if it is bad style.

James Edward Gray II