From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2000-02-29T12:07:59+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:01635] Re: Ruby: constructors, new and initialise

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to comp.lang.misc as well.

Hi,

Dave Thomas <Dave@Thomases.com> writes:

|> For example, if you want to create initialized SortedArray
|> by specifying elements like
|> 
|>   ary = SortedArray(1,5,4,3,7,3)
|> 
|> you just can't.  I feel this as restriction.
|
|That's true. But in what way is that different to any class where the
|constructor takes different parameters to it's subclass?

The biggest difference is redefining `initialize' works when `new'
don't work.  Changing number of arguments in subclass is a bad habit
in general, but `new' serves little bit differently, because it never
(well, seldom) be used polymorphic.

In fact Ruby called `initialize' for these classes before, just like
you proposed. In these days I received several complains like:
`initialize' would not work as I expect, it requires fixed number of
arguments, etc.

							matz.