From: "Victor \"Zverok\" Shepelev" <vshepelev@...>
Date: 2007-06-28T07:43:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Fun about inspect

From: Robert Klemme [mailto:shortcutter@googlemail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 1:40 PM
>On 26.06.2007 23:42, Victor "Zverok" Shepelev wrote:
>>
>> By some complex reasons, I've made an interesting conclusion: for
>> "serializable" types it's always good to have eval(obj.inspect) == obj
>>
>> For me it was a good thought, because previously, I've always doubt what
>> #inspect should do, and typically have ended with #inspect as alias for
>> #to_s
>>
[...]
>>
>> There are several interesting things to note:
>> * basic types (Numeric, String, Array, Hash) are all behave good here.
>
>No, they don't.  See below.
>
[...]
>>
>> What do you think?
>
>I think nobody should rely on #inspect creating something that will be
>able to resurrect the original.  Note, that it does not even work
>properly for Hashes:

[...]

There is a bit of misunderstanding. I'm not talking about some "strict
rules". I've just suggested a "rule of thumb" for designing #inspect. Of
course, there can be different cases and so on, but typically and especially
for "data" objects (those whose data is more important than behavior) it's
good to have object inspect-"restorable" at some level (even not in full, as
in your smart example about Hash).

V.