From: "Berger, Daniel" <Daniel.Berger@...>
Date: 2005-08-09T00:14:11+09:00
Subject: Re: polymorphism and/or named parameters: the ruby way?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephan Mueller [mailto:d454d@web.de] 
> Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 12:01 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: polymorphism and/or named parameters: the ruby way?
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> i am kind of a newbi, please forgive me if i am asking stale 
> questions.
> 
> I want to adjust the initialization of an object according to 
> the parameters given to new.

A typical idiom for constructors is to do "yield self if block_given?",
which I prefer over hash based arguments.  For example:

class Foo
   attr_accessor :bar, :baz, :zap
   def initialize
      yield self if block_given?
   end
end

foo = Foo.new do |f|
   f.bar = "hello"
   f.baz = 5
   f.zap = "world"
end

Many thanks to Hal Fulton's "The Ruby Way" for teaching me this trick.
:)

Regards,

Dan