From: Arlen Christian Mart Cuss <celtic@...>
Date: 2007-08-18T22:35:52+09:00
Subject: Named Constructor Idiom in Ruby?

Hi all,

I'm almost certain there's a good way to do this, but I seem to have
lost hold of the thought of how -- is there a straight-forward/neat way
to do the named constructor idiom in Ruby?

In C++ terms, a class like this implements it:

class A {
public:
    static A something() {
        A a;
        // do something special to a
        return a;
    }

    static A otherthing() {
        A a;
        // some other special thing to a
        return a;
    }

protected:
    A();
};

The result is that we can't construct A directly, only by one of the two
'named' constructors. Is there any way to achieve a similar thing using
protection in Ruby?

Thanks,

Arlen.