[ruby-talk:16953] Re: Method overloading (option) Was: Re:

On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Avi Bryant wrote:

> Hmmm...
> Aspects are for separating out orthogonal concerns; type-checking,
> although not exactly integral to most code, can't be cleanly
> separated from it either, since type declarations are best kept with the
> types.  I can imagine an aspect that took a naming convention, like
> foo(aString), and wove in code to enforce the implicit types, but I don't
> think it would be that useful unless that naming convention were followed
> quite strictly.
> 
I'm also a bit skeptical as to the value of all this even if there are
probably a handful ways one can think of doing it. One might be:

  typed_def :your_bizarre_method, Integer do |length|
    length + 1
  end
  typed_def :your_bizarre_method, String do |string|
    string.length + 1
  end

but I'm unsure what it would add compared to Matjus proposals.

With a RubyInRuby parser we could of course have a nicer syntax by
preprocessing the code

  def your_bizarre_method(Integer length)
    length + 1
  end

  def your_bizarre_method(String string)
    string.length + 1
  end

into

  def your_bizarre_method(a1)
    if a1.kind_of?(Integer)
      ...
    elsif a1.kind_of?(String)
      ...
    end
  end

but I don't think this is common enough to motivate the expenses...

/Robert