From: gga Date: 2007-02-05T10:25:08+09:00 Subject: Re: Inheriting from Fixnum Another thing probably worth looking is in how Python handles this with their new classes in their C code, as it is definitively more elegant than what Ruby does here (usually, it is the other way around, but not for this). In Python: class A(int): def A(x): super a = A(5) # you obviously still need to redefine operators if you want # math stuff to work, but it all seems to work more or less # the way you expect a full-OO language to work.