From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-02-18T01:24:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Alter String base class to perform new (private methods) before    returning itself when called by print statements

On 17.02.2008 15:00, Steven G. Harms wrote:
> Thank you for such a connsidered reply.

You're welcome!

> On Feb 17, 4:57 am, Robert Klemme <shortcut...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> :-)  My Latin is very rusty nowadays but this brings back memories (our
>> first sentence in class five was "agricola arat")... :-)
> 
> It's always about the farmers, isn't it?

:-))

>>> Here's the output (at top) and code (at bottom):http://stevengharms.com/?page_id=1159
>> Where exactly?  I could neither see code nor latin words on that page.
> 
> I *believe* you can now see the code at:
> http://stevengharms.com/improving-the-latin-command-line-verb-conjugator

I can confirm that. :-)

Few remarks: your type checking can be simplified:

case input
when Array
...
when String
...
else
   raise ArgumentError, "wrong type: #{input.inspect}"
end

Same for the conjugation, for which I would introduce symbols as names 
(not "1", "2" etc.).

Same in evaluate_conjugation.

def evaluate_conjugation
   case @infinitive
   when /\?re$/ # what exactly should your regexp look like?
                # question mark without escaping backslash
                # is not so good
     "1" # or rather a symbol denoting the name
   when /...
   ...
   else
   end
end


>> I can see where your motivation comes from.  Generally I'd opt for not
>> putting this into class String because it is too specialized (i.e
>> functionality that does make sense in context of your application only).
> [ code snip ]
> 
> That's sensible.  I've never seen this Struct.new syntax so I'll be
> eager to try it out.  I think i ( perhaps cumbersomely? ) wind up
> going more-or-less along this design pattern ( now that you can see
> the code ).

Struct.new is actually just a convenient way to create a new class with 
a set of properties that are honored during #hash, #eql? and #== so 
instances can be easily compared and used as Hash keys.

[...]

> This feels very "intro to metaprogramming" - the use of the
> method_missing method could, in principle, be used to expand the
> class. i.e.(pseudocode)  "if method_missing (:active_present) do the
> active_present build with macron_sanitization routine".  This may be
> where my code goes to once I get a bit more cleaned up.

If you know the method beforehand it is more efficient to define it 
right away.

>> LatinStrings to be returned, i.e. does the result of this method call
>> have to be modified already or do you need to be able to do it later?
>> If the former, then you can apply the conversion in Verb#active_present,
>> if the latter you can return a LatinString (as shown above).
> 
> I think I wind up doing the former
> 
> Thank you for your illuminating replies,

You're welcome!  I'm glad I could help.

Kind regards

	robert