From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-08-19T19:56:17+09:00
Subject: Re: finding one's self in the strangest places

Trans wrote:

> What amazes me about this is that 'name' in 'name[self]' is a local
> variable assigned to a lambda, yet 'self' is not and rather belongs to
> the initialized instance of the class. How is that possible? How is
> execution of the lambda deferred til later? I think this is a
> facinating example of Ruby's "juggling" abilities.

The concept is generally known as "closure". The closure captures variable
bindings so you can access them later:

12:53:16 [source]: ruby -e 'x=10;f=lambda { x }; p f.call;x=20;p f.call'
10
20
12:53:23 [source]:

> Also, it would be nice to be able to take this one step further, if it
> were possible NOT to have to explictly pass 'binding' via
> #dyanmic_mixin or pass 'self' via the local var lambda, then it would
> be perfect.

There is a module that allows access to the bindinf of the caller.  This
would help you as it would make passing a binding explicit unnecessary.

Kind regards

    robert