From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2005-10-20T05:12:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Method annotation and anonymous functions

On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 04:41:51AM +0900, stevetuckner wrote:
> What I don't like about that proposal is that these annotations only 
> take one argument (the symbol) and aren't applied to a Method object 
> (where the annotations rightly should reside).

Changing def to return a Method object could also be done, but this is a
larger change; it requires methods like private() to be able to take a
Method or a Symbol (currently they only take a Symbol).

The annotation does not belong with the (Unbound)Method object; it
belongs with the method.  This is an important distinction:

  irb(main):001:0> class Foo; def foo; end; end
  => nil
  irb(main):005:0> m1 = Foo.instance_method(:foo); m1.object_id
  => 538483812
  irb(main):006:0> m2 = Foo.instance_method(:foo); m2.object_id
  => 538477272

Note that m1 and m2 are two *different* objects which refer to the same
method.

> >Chaining the annotations on multiple lines can be done using '\':
> >
> > private \
> > module_function \
> > doc("This is a docstring") \
> > def baz(a, b, c)
> >   # ...
> > end
> > 
> >
> Aside from looking icky, how does doc() know what symbol to use to apply 
> the annotation with?

Good point, I missed this the first time through.

Paul