From: "Ball, Donald A Jr (Library)" <donald.ball@...>
Date: 2007-05-03T02:09:37+09:00
Subject: Re: simple subclass question

Okay, so maybe this turns out to be a not-so-simple subclass question
after all. I appreciate all the thoughtful answers and links, I'm pretty
close to wrapping my head around it all. I'm still having trouble with
class instance variable initialization, and have come up with code
sample which should illustrate the point:

class Breakfast
  def self.add_food(*args)
    @foods ||= []
    args.each do |arg|
      @foods << arg
    end
  end

  def self.foods
    if superclass.respond_to?(:foods)
      superclass.foods + @foods
    else
      @foods
    end
  end

  add_food :eggs
end

class RubyBreakfast < Breakfast
  add_food :grapefruit, :chunky_bacon
end

class BoringBreakfast < Breakfast
  add_food :dry_toast, :gruel
end 

Everybody loves breakfast, right? This code works great, except... maybe
I don't want Breakfast to have :eggs by default, but if I remove the
add_food :eggs from Breakfast, then Breakfast.foods returns nil instead
of [] since @foods isn't initialized until add_food is called, and
RubyBreakfast.foods throws an exception trying to its delicious foods
array to nil. But I'll be damned if I can figure out how to properly
initialize @foods in Breakfast. Can someone point me in the proper
direction?

- donald