From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2008-10-11T07:19:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Thread: super should be first line or last line?

christoforever@gmail.com wrote:
> While playing around with ruby threads I noticed that if you dont call
> super when subclassing a thread you will get an initialization error.
> So ok we throw a super in the initialize method and that clears things
> up. Unfortunately if you put super as the first line in the initialize
> method the rest of the initialize will not execute but the block which
> is part of the initial thread creation gets initialized. However if
> you put super as the last statement in the initialize method, the
> whole initialize gets executed and then the block from the thread
> creation gets executed. Does anyone else find this a bit funny? And
> what is a good practice when subclassing thread... to put super first
> or last statement in the initialize method? and is there any benefit
> for either?

I'll echo others' concerns about why you're doing this, but if the 
initialize chain causes you headaches you could always redefine new for 
your class:

class MyThread < Thread
   def self.new(arg1, arg2)
     super {
       Thread.current[:arg1] = arg1
       Thread.current[:arg2] = arg2
       yield
     }
   }
}

It would probably be better put in a separate data structure that spins 
up a Thread internally though.

- Charlie