From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2006-06-03T07:22:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Adding an Increment Operator?

On Friday 02 June 2006 4:02 pm, Dave Howell wrote:

> Although I will admit to being rather surprised that the answer to the
> question
>  How do I do this?
>   whatever = 1
>   whatever.increment
>   p whatever
>   => 2
> is apparently "You Can't."

Why is it surprising?

And you almost can, sort of, by relying on the syntactic similarity between a 
method call and a variable reference and using a simple counter object.

self.whatever = 1
whatever.increment
p whatever
=> 2

That, you can do.

-----
class IncObj
        def initialize(val)
                @me = @val.to_i
        end

        def to_s
                @me.to_s
        end

        def to_i
                @me
        end

        def increment
                @me += 1
        end
end

def whatever; @whatever; end

def whatever=(val); @whatever = IncObj.new(val); end

self.whatever = 1
whatever.increment
p whatever
-----


Kirk Haines