From: Lars Christensen <larsch@...>
Date: 2001-08-07T08:52:43+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19262] Dereference operator


Hi,

I was just wondering about the possibility for overloading of what in C++
is called the dereferencing operator. That is, so you could do something
like:

  class Proxy
    def initialize(obj); @obj = obj; end

    def . (aSymbol, *args)
      if @obj.respond_to? aSymbol
        @obj.send(aSymbol, *args)
      else
        send(aSymbol, *args)
      end
    end
  end

  foo = "foobar"
  bar = Proxy.new(foo)

  p bar  #=> "foobar"

This will totally masquarade the proxied object whereas the overloading of
missing_method will not allow proxying of methods already in Proxy.

-- 
Lars Christensen, larsch@cs.auc.dk