From: Jacob Fugal <lukfugl@...>
Date: 2005-08-31T00:59:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Method behaves differently when called using #send

> OK, here's another idea.  How about
>
>  foo.send(:bar)
>
> calls only public methods and
>
>  send(:bar)
>
> calls private methods of the receiver as well?

<snip>

> |At first glance that seems amazingly logical. But on second thought it
> |may be too logical. What of the use case where one purposefuly wishes
> |to call private method from the outside (you know "bad-form"
> |meta-programming stuff).
> 
> foo.instance_eval{
>   send(:bar)
> }

I like it. One of my favorite suggestions from the above thread was
"instance_send". I would suggest the following convenience method to
go along with the above:

  class Object
    def instance_send( symbol, *args, &block )
      instance_eval { send( symbol, *args, &block ) }
    end
  end

Thus the real difference is based on context (and there is already
precedence for explicit vs. implicit receiver being treated
differently) as Matz suggested, but there's an instance_send method to
exactly parallel instance_eval. Very clean, IMO.

Jacob Fugal