From: Mat Schaffer <schapht@...>
Date: 2007-03-21T01:15:36+09:00
Subject: Re: does Ruby not support multiple "initialize" methods for a class???



On Mar 20, 10:42 am, ara.t.how...@noaa.gov wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Greg Hauptmann wrote:
> > I have a class that can be created from a couple of scenarios, and for each
> > the initial data to populate the class is different.  I was going to create
> > two "initialize" methods with their own specific method signature to cover
> > off these two scenarios however I guess I will need to perhaps just create
> > two separate/normal methods for this.  Perhaps then it would be like:
>
> > a = Klass.new
> > a.create_for_scenario_one (...)
>
> you can use class methods to return objects, as others have mentioned, but it
> also extremely easy to do your own function signature matching in ruby

In the interest of ridiculousness, how about using the multi gem for
this? :)

require 'rubygems'
require 'multi'

class Foo
  def initialize(*args)
    multi(:init, Integer) { |i|
      puts 'integer used'
      # do integer stuff...
    }

    multi(:init, Float) { |f|
      puts 'float used'
      # do float stuff...
    }

    init(*args)
  end
end