From: DrBenway <westworld@...>
Date: 2008-01-26T05:19:58+09:00
Subject: Re: to sleep no more

On Jan 25, 8:27 pm, Stephen Kratzer <kratz...@pa.net> wrote:
> On Friday 25 January 2008 13:25:00 DrBenway wrote:
>
>
>
> > hi all,
>
> > I'm a ruby noop trying his first steps. I'd like a little advice.
>
> > What I want to make is the following.
>
> > An object Chicken
> > - its attribute starts as 'egg'
> > - after x times sleep() it the attribute gets the value chicken
> > - x times sleep later the object can make a call to make a new
> > instance of chicken (creating another egg)
>
> > I could make a method to change the attribute and call this from my
> > main program.
> > In other words  my sleep method would be in my main program and call
> > the objects method.
> > I was wondering if it would be possible to keep the sleep in the
> > object.
> > (Since I was planning on creating some other animals as well, each
> > with a special amount of time needed to go to the next step.)
>
> > I think it's called threads in ruby but I'm not sure.  (if it's called
> > threads is this the way to handle this problem? Does it act like an
> > Ajax call?)
>
> > Many thnx
>
> > DrBenway
>
> Something like this might work for your purposes:
>
> class Animal
>         attr_reader :incubation_period, :maturation_period, :from_type,
>                     :to_type, :current_type, :slept, :children
>
>         def initialize(i_period = 60, m_period = 120, from = "egg", to
> = "chicken")
>                 @incubation_period = i_period
>                 @maturation_period = m_period
>                 @slept = 0
>                 @from_type = from
>                 @to_type = to
>                 @current_type = @from_type
>                 @children = []
>         end
>
>         def mysleep(seconds = @incubation_period)
>                 @slept += sleep(seconds)
>                 if @slept >= @incubation_period
>                         @current_type = @to_type
>                 end
>         end
>
>         def give_birth(count = 1)
>                 if @slept >= @maturation_period
>                         for number in children.length..(children.length +
> count - 1)
>                                 puts "I had another child."
>                                 children[number] =
> Animal.new(@incubation_period, @maturation_period, @from_type, @to_type);
>                         end
>                 else
>                         puts "I'm too young to give birth."
>                 end
>         end
> end
>
> snake = Animal.new(5, 10, "egg", "snake")
> snake.mysleep(4)
> puts snake.current_type
> snake.give_birth
> snake.mysleep(4)
> puts snake.current_type
> snake.give_birth
> snake.mysleep(4)
> puts snake.current_type
> snake.give_birth(5)

Wow thnx Stephen for coocking up an example so fast :)
That's indeed what I was planning to do.

The only thing that may not have been very obvious (sorry for this) in
my example above was:
Is there a way to take the snake.mysleep(4) out of our main program
and put it in the class/object itself
That way I call  snake = Animal.new(5, 10, "egg", "snake") once and
from then on it leads a life on its own (that's what got me to think
that I needed threads).
Same goes for all the other snakes that get born from the first.
I don't feel like messing with arrays of
snakes,pigs,boars,chickens,... out of the classes