From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-10-27T20:42:04+09:00
Subject: Re: overriding #inspect

Sean O'Halpin wrote:
> On 10/26/05, Eric Mahurin <eric_mahurin@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> --- Sean O'Halpin <sean.ohalpin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/26/05, Eric Mahurin <eric_mahurin@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> Anybody know what the best way to override inspect where
>>>> you
>>>>> may have a recursive data structure?
>>>>
>>>> Check out Tanaka Akira's 'pp' lib (if only to convince
>>>> yourself that
>>>> there's no silver bullet!)
>>
>> Actually, as soon as I allowed myself to make an instance
>> variable, it didn't seem so bad.  Here's what I came up with:
>>
>> def inspect
>>    to_s[0..-2].concat(" #{
>>        if defined?(@inspecting)
>>            "..."
>>        else
>>            begin
>>                @inspecting = true
>>                ... generate inspect contents here ...
>>            ensure
>>                remove_instance_variable(:@inspecting)
>>            end
>>        end
>>    }>")
>> end
>
> But as soon as you start using flags to guard against cycles you have
> to at least acknowledge that it won't be thread safe, unless you take
> an approach like 'pp' (which stashes object_id in
> Thread.current[InspectKey]).

.... which reminds me of an RCR I've been wanting to submit for quite some
time now:
http://rcrchive.net/rcr/show/323

This could help here, too.

Kind regards

    robert