From: "Morris, Chris" <chris.morris@...>
Date: 2001-12-14T01:44:53+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:28419] Ruby is cool (adding methods to base classes)

Just had to share my current Ruby is cool moment. 

I needed some funky processing of array data and was about to create the
following method:

  isArrayOrderedSuchNSuch(array, param, paramb)

... then thought, drag, I'll have 5 of these, it's stupid to have to pass
array into each one of them.

So, I'll make an analytical object that takes the array in the constructor

Why not make a subclassed object? That'd be better. That way in my analyzing
object I won't have lots of @array. floating around. 

But wait, why subclass ... I only need these methods for a work script, why
just tack them on the existing Array class?

Simple - done. Cool.

It reminds of working in Delphi and having to deal with all of the stuff I
can't touch in their library code. Subclassing has limitations depending on
how the superclass was written (private/protected/blah). If you need to work
around a glitch, you've got source so you can rebuild the library
(woo-hoo!), but then there's this weighty permanance - I've modified the
Vcl, remember it won't work on other developer's machines until they put in
the fix as well.

Funny -- I loved Delphi because it let me get down where VB never let me
even see before. Now I'm complaining about its limitations <g>. 

Chris