From: Paul Brannan <paul@...>
Date: 2002-02-23T04:24:26+09:00
Subject: Re: dispatching and class references

On Sat, Feb 23, 2002 at 04:19:19AM +0900, Mark Probert wrote:
> Thank you for everyone for helping me with my dispatch
> query the other day.  Now fro part 2 :-)
> 
> It seems that ruby returns object values by reference.
> Is there any way to return the value?  I would like the
> pattern, stored in Sym::val to be treated as a template
> and retain its value ('xxx') over each dispatch call.

Returning by value is almost the same as returning a reference to a
copy.

To make a smallow copy:
  obj.dup

To make a deep copy:
  Marshal::load(Marshall::dump(obj))

Returning copies will have a performance impact.  If you want to return
a reference but still not allow the user to change the returned object,
you can return a frozen object.

Paul