From: Bob Hutchison <hutch@...>
Date: 2005-09-27T13:16:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there an issue with a library extending Object?


On Sep 26, 2005, at 6:45 PM, Ara.T.Howard wrote:


> On Tue, 27 Sep 2005, Bob Hutchison wrote:
>
>> I am writing a library for Ruby programmers. What are the issues  
>> with adding
>> methods to the Object class? I'm not talking about the  
>> practicalities of it
>> -- those are as easy as could be and work. What I am concerned  
>> with is the
>> reaction a programmer using that library might have. The benefit is a
>> simplification of a particularly error-prone, tedious, ugly, and  
>> repetitive
>> test in the library user's code (that might not show up in unit  
>> tests). I
>> don't know what the disadvantages might be, name conflict I  
>> suppose. Any
>> others? Any guidelines as to when extending standard classes is  
>> considered
>> okay, or not? Is there an expectation in the Ruby culture? is this  
>> kind of
>> thing considered rude, or worse?
>>
>
> is there any reason you can't extend the bjectinstead of classes?
>

Good suggestion. I gave this a shot. It works for the key bits and  
pieces *except* for symbols. So, at the moment, I have a  
configuration option that will determine whether to extend Symbol  
(only), or will convert symbols to strings.

As I play with it, this is beginning to look like an expensive  
proposition. Any idea what the overhead to extending an instance with  
a module is? I think I'm going to have to re-think this.

Thanks for the help.

Cheers,
Bob

----
Bob Hutchison          -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc.  -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur              -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>