From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2007-01-04T09:48:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Little Things

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 dblack@wobblini.net wrote:

>> hmmm.  there is no way around this kind of thing unless the operation of
>> sending a message to an object is removed from the object's interface.  so 
>> we
>> could have something like
>> 
>>  Pervasives.send obj, message, *args, &block
>> 
>> here Pervasives is an object that cannot be changed - even by changing
>> Object#send.
>> 
>> this also allows
>> 
>>  Pervasives.object_id obj
>> 
>> etc.
>> 
>> thoughts?
>
> I'm afraid I'm lost.  What's wrong with send, other than its
> commonness as a name (which is dealt with by __send__)?  If it's too
> much trouble to explain, that's OK.

so long as we have to rely on objects responding to certain methods certain
constructs, such as those that meta-programming cut to, can be made difficult
since the very methods we require to operate can be over-ridden.  this is why
we have

   __id__
   __send__

are examples.  by moving the essential methods outside of the object itself an
into a frozen introspector

   Introspector.object_id obj

we can elimnate this gotcha and this code

   class BlankSlate
     instance_methods.each{|m| remove_method unless m[/__/]}
   end

can be reduced (and made more robust) to

   class BlankSlate
     instance_methods.each{|m| remove_method m}
   end

make sense?

-a
-- 
if you find yourself slandering anybody, first imagine that your mouth is
filled with excrement.  it will break you of the habit quickly enough. - the
dalai lama