From: "Jörg W Mittag" <JoergWMittag+Usenet@...>
Date: 2009-01-02T17:11:26+09:00
Subject: Re: What does 'Monkey Patching' exactly Mean in Ruby?

Phlip wrote:
> Yaser Sulaiman wrote:
>> 3- Is the following considered as monkey patching, or is it something else?
>> 
>> class String
>>   def foo
>>     "bar"
>>   end
>> end
> 
> No, that is simply extending the class with a new method.

Ah, but that's the interesting part: how do you know that somebody
else didn't already add a String#foo method? In that case, it *would*
be monkey patching. Even worse: which of the two methods would be
considered monkey patching and which one wouldn't, would depend
entirely on the *load order* of those two snippets of code.

That's why I don't think distinguishing between adding and changing
methods makes sense: either both are monkey patching or neither are.

jwm