From: George Ogata <george.ogata@...>
Date: 2007-02-19T02:26:23+09:00
Subject: Re: More flexible inheritance

On 2/19/07, Pit Capitain <pit@capitain.de> wrote:
> George, I'm not Tom, but I think that for redefining a method, instead of
>
>    class X
>      def a; "a2"; end
>    end
>
> internally you would do something like
>
>    X.ancestors[ 1 ].module_eval {
>      def a; "a2"; end
>    }
>
> Everything you would do with class X in normal Ruby you would do to the
> anonymous module being the first in the ancestors chain.

Hi Pit,

Ah ok, I was overlooking the fact that *original* methods of X would
live in an anonymous module as well.

It's an interesting idea.  It does still change the existing semantics
a little, though.  Currently, if you do:

  class C
    def f; 'C'; end
  end

  module M
    def f; 'M'; end
  end

  C.send(:include, M)

...C still comes first in the lookup path.  You'd need to ensure that
the anonymous modules (eigenmodules? ;-) come at the front of the
ancestor chain if you wanted to preserve this behavior.

But yeah, interesting idea!

Regards,
George.