From: furtive.clown@...
Date: 2008-02-25T05:54:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby


The problem is not monkey patching itself, but that there is no
unified mechanism for dealing with it.  We wish to make local changes
to (what is currently implemented as) global objects, namely the
singletons comprising the built-in classes.  That's difficult or
impossible to do cleanly.

Is (or was) there a serious plan for something like selector
namespaces in ruby 2.0?  I found http://rubygarden.org/ruby/page/show/Rite
which appears to be down (google cache:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:ej4aPcNY41QJ:rubygarden.org/ruby/page/show/Rite+http://rubygarden.org/ruby/page/show/Rite&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
)

I have a simple example from my own experience.  In one project I had
a bewildering number of property sets which needed to be added,
subtracted, or'd, and and'ed with each other every which way.  I began
using a Set class but it quickly became too cumbersome, as many of my
definitions used hash literals.  Inserting +,-,&,| methods into the
Hash class was a tremendous help: using these operations with Hash
literals GREATLY improved readability and maintainability.

Now what if I made my project into a library for others to use?  I
want MY Hash in MY library ONLY, without affecting the client.  I
MIGHT be able to scope the change to Hash appropriately, for example
by taking a snapshot of Hash then restoring it before returning to the
client.  But eventually I'll run into a case where I need to yield to
client code while at the same needing MY Hash class.  Thus I'll be
forced to pollute the client with my funky Hash.

--FC