From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2007-01-16T15:57:38+09:00
Subject: Re: How to realize method/function overloading in Ruby?

On 1/16/07, Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/16/07, Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > def do_something_with_array(a)
> > >     # assume a is an array
> > > end
> > > def do_something_with_hash(h)
> > >    # assume h is a hash
> > > end
> > > def do_something_with_int(i)
> > >    # assume i is an int
> > > end

Jeez! Sorry for the 3 emails, I must be tired.  This is the little
hack I was trying to demonstrate:

seltzer:~/devel/parser-experiment/pegleg_evaluator sandal$ irb
>> def foo_array(a)
>>   a + [1]
>> end
=> nil
>> def foo_string(a)
>>   a << "apple"
>> end
=> nil
>> def foo(a)
>>   send("#{a.class.name.downcase",a)
>> end
>> def foo(a)
>>   send("foo_#{a.class.name.downcase}",a)
>> end
=> nil
>> foo([1,2,3])
=> [1, 2, 3, 1]
>> foo("banana")
=> "bananaapple"


Though as others mentioned, a lot of this can be avoided by clever design. :)