From: Tony Arcieri <tony@...>
Date: 2010-01-26T05:56:44+09:00
Subject: Why is the Binding object so useless?

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I am used to Ruby being a rather reflective language that gives carte
blanche to the programmer.  So I found this rather surprising:

>> Marshal.dump binding
TypeError: no marshal_dump is defined for class Binding

Whaa?

>> Binding.new
NoMethodError: undefined method `new' for Binding:Class

Huh?

>> binding.methods(false)
=> []

You're kidding me, right?

I would expect you to be able to do all of the above.  In addition to that,
it's sure be nice to do some of the following:

>> Binding.new :a => 1, :b => 2, :c =>3
=> #<Binding:0x1018130b0> # new binding object with the given variables
bound
>> binding.to_hash
=> {:a => 1, :b => 2, :c => 3} # Bound variables, as a hash
>> binding.to_yaml
=> "--- !ruby/object:Binding \na: 1\nb: 2\nc: 3\n" # YAML dump of a Binding
object

And hey, maybe Binding#inspect could give a little more information than its
object_id?

Canned responses to apologists:

= Why do you want to do that?

I don't know, why should you be able to redefine Integer#+?

= No really, why do you want to do that?

I would like to implement a remote REPL with a stateless Ruby server and a
non-Ruby client

= Just use DRb!

I am really not wanting to open up an addition port just for DRb nor pursue
solutions which involve a non-Ruby client talking the DRb protocol.
Embedding some form of Ruby interpreter client side is not an option.

Props to Rubinius for fixing some of these problems!

irb(main):001:0> Binding.new
=> #<Binding:0x2e0>

Yay!  A clean binding!

>> Marshal.dump Binding.new
=> "\004\bo:\fBinding\000"

Amazing!

-- 
Tony Arcieri
Medioh! A Kudelski Brand

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