From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2009-06-04T19:27:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Execution

Mike Stephens wrote:
> If you have a script with a lot of classes, does the interpreter read
> through and 'execute' each class even though they haven't yet been
> called?

Yes. Everything is done at runtime.

* require 'foo' just loads and executes the code in foo.rb.

* Code of the form "class X; def m; ..." has the runtime effect of 
defining methods in classes.

* It's quite common to have code which sets up variables and/or 
constants too. For example:

class X
  @count = 0

  def self.create(*args)
    @count += 1
    new(*args)
  end

  def self.count
    @count
  end
end

a = X.create
b = X.create
puts X.count
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