From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2001-10-30T00:07:59+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23727] Re: ref. constructors and new (was: Re: class Foo does not call Class.new?)

"Rich Kilmer" <rich@infoether.com> writes:

> The parser would have to know that when you call:
> 
> String.new("text") 
> 
> it is a special case because when you call:
> 
> Foo.new("text") => Foo.new(String.new("text"))
> 
> you don't want:
> 
> String.new("text") => String.new(String.new("text"))


Foo.new("text") would be executed as

    str = String.new(<internal representation of "text">)
    str.initialize(str)
    Foo.new(str)

To be consistent, the internal representation of "text" might well be
an Array of integers (or characters if we end up with a Character class).

I'm not saying this is efficient, but I think it is possible.


Dave