From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2010-01-28T00:50:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Class with Multi Constrcutor ( initialize )

Checking old emails on the matter, I like this approach a lot:

If you have different ways of constructing objects of a class, create
different class methods to do so. For example:

class MyClass
   def self.from_x_y(x,y)
       MyClass.new(x,y)
   end

  def self.default
     MyClass.new(0,0)
   end

   def self.from_point(p)
       MyClass.new(p.x, p.y)
   end

   def initialize(x,y)
      @x = x
       @y = y
   end
end

This way you can have:

MyClass.default #=> 0,0
MyClass.from_x_y(10,20) # => 10,20
MyClass.from_point(Point.new(1,2)) #=> 1,2

Hope this helps,

Jesus.