From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2001-11-03T04:39:50+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24193] Re: private instance_variable?

Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> In message "[ruby-talk:24065] Re: private instance_variable?"
>     on 01/11/01, Lars Christensen <larsch@cs.auc.dk> writes:
> 
> |Related to this, will there be private/protected constants? I don't
> |particularly enjoy that this is possible:
> |
> |$ ./ruby -e 'p String::Process::Regexp::Enumerable::IO::String.new("foo")'
> |"foo"
> 
> I admit it's annoying, but not that much (bacause you're not forced to
> do so).
> 
>                                                         matz.

Why be annoyed? It's useful, at least as a default behavior:

class Base
  attr_accessor :name
  def initialize name
    @name = type::String.new name
  end
end

class A < Base
  class String < String
    def downcase
      self.dup
    end
  end
end

class B < Base
end

a = A.new "Lars"
b = B.new "Matz"

print "Hello, ", [a, b].map { |s| s.name.downcase }.join " and "

 ==> Hello, Lars and matz

--
Joel VanderWerf                          California PATH, UC Berkeley
mailto:vjoel@path.berkeley.edu                     Ph. (510) 231-9446
http://www.path.berkeley.edu                       FAX (510) 231-9512