From: Ross Bamford <rossrt@...>
Date: 2006-05-19T16:50:49+09:00
Subject: Re: send vs. dot notation

On Fri, 2006-05-19 at 16:43 +0900, Pit Capitain wrote:
> Giles Bowkett schrieb:
> > What's a good reason to use send() instead of a dot to send a message?
> > 
> > Is it for situations where you know you're going to want to send an
> > object a message, but you don't know what that message is until
> > runtime?
> 
> Giles, as others have noted, this is the main reason. Another one has 
> been to call private methods of an object [...]

Also, I've seen it used before to do things like:

class C
  define_method(:"wierd method with-illegal-chars") { puts "call me" }
end

C.new.send(:"wierd method with-illegal-chars")
call me

Can't remember exactly why, I think it was part of a memoize type thing,
to store stuff in methods without clashing or something. In any event it
seems like a bad idea to me, but there you go...

-- 
Ross Bamford - rosco@roscopeco.REMOVE.co.uk