From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2009-06-21T01:36:46+09:00
Subject: Re: 'move into' a module's namespace in irb

Hi --

On Sun, 21 Jun 2009, Max Williams wrote:

> David A. Black wrote:
>> Hi --
>>
>> On Sun, 21 Jun 2009, Max Williams wrote:
>>
>>>>> String.new.class
>>> a weird way.
>> When you do irb M, you're putting M before all else in the constant
>> resolution path. So String.new is really M::String.new. "hello" is
>> still a ::String (top-level, core String class), because the existence
>> of M::String does not affect the behavior of the literal quotation
>> marks (which create a ::String).
>>
>>
>> David
>
> ah, ok.  I thought that
>
> "hello"
>
> was the same thing as
>
> String.new("hello")
>
> , though?  Or, does it bypass the usual lookup table for methods?

It bypasses. The literal constructors aren't hooked in to the
method-based constructors:

irb(main):001:0> def Array.new; "blah"; end
=> nil
irb(main):002:0> Array.new
=> "blah"
irb(main):003:0> []
=> []

etc.


David

-- 
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