From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2001-10-30T15:07:43+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23808] Re: ref. constructors and new (was: Re: class Foo does not call Class.new?)

matz@ruby-lang.org (Yukihiro Matsumoto) writes:

> But things are not simple as they appear.  Suppose we call String.new
> for string literals, 
> 
>   def String.new(str)
>      StringSubclass.new(str)
>   end
> 
> would cause infinite loop, and I don't think there's no easy work
> around for it.

I don't believe the meta-strings subclass String, so I don't think the
loop would occur:

   def String.new(str)
      s = self.allocate(str)
      MetaString.new(s)
   end


Of course there's the problem with the return value from #initialize
too... :)

All in all, I think this whole thing is a tad dangerous: it's just fun
to try to find ways of making even literals dynamic.


Regards


Dave