From: gwtmp01@...
Date: 2006-07-12T00:05:41+09:00
Subject: Re: module private methods inheritance ?


On Jul 11, 2006, at 10:21 AM, transfire@gmail.com wrote:
> You can skip over ancestors using something like
> facet/kernel/as but initialize is a touchy matter --it's not something
> one generally defines in a module in the first place.

I see this idea mentioned often (avoid initialize in modules). Some  
modules
need initialization, some don't.  I don't think it is helpful
to generalize beyond that. I often see:

   module A
     def foo
       @foo ||= {}
     end
   end

which is basically a lazy initialization of @foo by the module  
instead of:

   module A
     def initialize
       @foo = {}
     end
   end

   class B
     def initialize
       super
       # init for B here
     end
   end

You can use Module#included to handle class/module level  
initialization but
I sometimes wish there was a well-defined instance initialization  
hook for
included modules instead of relying on the appropriate use of super()  
within
initialize().  I'm not sure what it would look like though, maybe:

module M
   def self.instantiated(x)
      x.initialize_M
   end
   def initialize_M
      #initialization for M goes here
   end
end

Presumably Class#new would trigger Module.instantiated for all  
included modules
in some well defined order (appearence in ancestors list?).

These seems kind of inelegant though.  There must be a better  
solution.  Or maybe
it is a solution looking for a problem.

Gary Wright