Re: More flexible inheritance

On Feb 19, 3:04 am, Yukihiro Matsumoto <[e-mail]> wrote:

> What is the benefit of by this change?

The benifits are more robust means of extension b/c

  1) mixins can be used for extensions
  2) mixins are much more flexible and elegant than open/alias/
redefine
  3) no longer need to fuss with alias names or method binding
  4) we would no longer require alias (which is a keyword)
  5) lends itself to future possiblities such as uninclude
  6) promotes better design and way of thinking whereby
     a class is a collection of "bahaviors" (sub your prefered term)

> Besides that this change would make remove_method impossible.

remove_method would be possible. by default it could effect the
"lowest" module. and if need be, of course, one can select the
particular mixin to effect.

> I vaguely think of similar idea with combination of class box, so that
> we can control side-effect from open classes, i.e.
>
>   namespace foo  # fake syntax
>
>   # re-opening class that effective only in this namespace
>   class String
>     def a; "a"; end
>   end
>
>   "foo".a  # "a" method available here
>
> But I am still not confident of the benefit and effect of this
> behavior.

another topic worth consideration, but selector namespaces are a
different animal I think --well, unless we can dynamically activate
and deactive the mixin modules depedning on the namespace we're in,
then namespaces could be based on these. Hmm...that's a cool idea, but
I suspect it would require a major overhaul in how Ruby works under
the hood.

T.