[ruby-talk:19903] Re: Why not?: Assigning to self

On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 11:17:44PM +0900, Piers Cawley wrote:
> Once again, I point at my 'state machine' example as an instance where
> 'becoming' could be useful. The 'square'/'rectangle' thing is, as you
> point out, silly.

My 2c.

I think #become is harmful when it changes the interface of an object.

The purpose of #become is to change an object's behavior without having to
manually change all references to it. But if the interace of the object
changes, we will still have to do some sort of manual update to
make sure that everywhere a reference to the object is used, we are aware
of its new interface. So nothing is really gained. At the same time,
a lot is lost. Since objects can change interface "under our feet" it becomes
harder to read programs.

A #become that doesn't change the interface of the object, but only the
implementation, could be considered reasonably safe. Such a #become would,
I think, be OK.

But in Ruby and other "loose" languages, it is often hard to say what the
interface of an object is. Often it is the *documentation* that defines
which methods belong to the interface and which are "internal". It is hard
to see how a check that the interfaces are the same could be done in Ruby.

Then there is the question of whether the langauge should try to enforce a
good coding style, or allow everything and let the users care about shooting
themselves in the foot. Should we allow #become even if we cannot restrict
it to "safe" cases?

Then of course, there is the implementation issue. How much work would it be to
implement #become, and is that time perhaps better spent on developing other
parts of ruby? There aren't that many programs that can make good use of
#become (most people have a hard time coming up with good examples) and
everything that can be done with #become can be done in other ways, without too
much of a hassle -- either by returning new objects (if there are not multiple
references to the object) or by implementing a delegator mechanism:


(Example 1 -- returning new objects)

	class State1
		def transition(data)
			...
			return State2.new()
		end
	end

	@state = State1.new()
	@state = @state.transition(data1)
	@state = @state.transition(data2)
	...


(Example 2 -- with delegator)

	class StateMachine
		def initialize()
			@state = State1.new()
		end

		def transition(data)
			@state = @state.transition(data)
		end
	end

	@state = StateMachine.new()
	@state.transition(data1)
	@state.transition(data2)
	...

// Niklas