From: gwtmp01@...
Date: 2005-06-26T01:32:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Defining a method vs aliasing it


On Jun 25, 2005, at 7:33 AM, leon breedt wrote:
> I'm not exactly sure why defining a method with "def methodname"
> versus aliasing it would behave differently.

It is my understanding that 'alias' doesn't behave in the sense that
it creates two method names that reference the same definition.  Instead
it creates a new method and duplicates the definition of the old  
message.
The resulting method is completely independent of the original method.

Maybe I'm missing something (probably) but there seems to be a semantic
mismatch between the word 'alias' and the behavior of the method  
'alias'.

Shouldn't it be called dup_method or something similar?

P.S.  I had similar confusion with 'include' because of my C background.
I just couldn't get it into my head that 'include' was not attempting
to read some file somewhere.  Once I figured that out, the relationship
between 'require' and 'include' was much more clear.



Gary Wright