From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-05-17T02:10:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby classes and << Syntax

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Christoph Schiessl <c.schiessl@gmx.net> wrote:
> I have written a simple snippet of code and would appreciate any help with
> understanding what's really going on.
>
>
> ### Creating Basic Class
> class Person # Same as: class Person < Object
>  attr_accessor :firstname
>  attr_accessor :lastname
>
>  def initialize(firstname, lastname)
>    @firstname, @lastname = firstname, lastname
>  end
>
>  def fullname
>    @firstname + ' ' + @lastname
>  end
> end
>
> ### Create two instances of class Person
> john = Person.new('John', 'Doe')
> john.firstname # => "John"
> john.lastname # => "Doe"
> john.to_s # => "#<Person:0x356678>"
>
> jack = Person.new('Jack', 'Stone')
> jack.firstname # => "Jack"
> jack.lastname # => "Stone"
> jack.to_s # => "#<Person:0x3512f4>"
>
> class Person
>  def to_s
>    'Person: ' + fullname
>  end
> end
>
> john.to_s # => "Person: John Doe"
> jack.to_s # => "Person: Jack Stone"
> ### Everything as expected until here...
>
> ### Now the interesing part:
> class <<Person
>  def birthday
>    '2008-05-16'
>  end
> end

You are defining a class method and not a class instance method.  Do this...

class Person
  def birthday
    '2008-05-16'
  end
end

Todd