From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2007-02-22T11:01:01+09:00
Subject: Re: More flexible inheritance

Hi,

In message "Re: More flexible inheritance"
    on Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:43:14 +0900, "Trans" <transfire@gmail.com> writes:

|On Feb 19, 3:04 am, Yukihiro Matsumoto <m...@ruby-lang.org> 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)

I think I get the picture .. gradually.  Interesting.
Can you be more specific about the suggestion, for example, for the
code

  class Foo < Object
    def foo
    end
  end

  class Foo
    def bar
    end
  end

what would happen?  Can we access appending anonymous mixin module?

|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.

Sure it is.  But I suspect this proposal is nearly as huge as selector
namespace for language change, although implementation is far easier.

							matz.