From: Timothy Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2006-11-10T07:30:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Overwriting the Integer class for method succ! (instead of just succ)

paul wrote:
> Thanks all! I became so much wiser now. I gues I didn't find this
> information googling, because I assumed that it would be possible,
> therefore searching "ruby integer overwrite value" and such...
>
> Now I still wonder, the only source-code I found for the Integer class
> was in C. From this I wasn't able to figure out how I would go IF i'd
> like to write this count++ (and with that modifying all 1's to 2's
> e.g.).
>
> This kind of information, is not in the Programming Ruby Built-in
> Classes and Methods chapter. Is this because that only contains the
> public methods, and not the protected's? Or are there no such thing as
> protected's for Integer (because it's in C?)?
>
> Cheers again
>
>
>   
I think it's because this behavior is considered to be part of Ruby's 
fundamental design. Changing this behavior requires deep knowledge of 
Ruby internals (and C programming) and is outside the scope of a book 
like Programming Ruby.