From: Paul Brannan <paul@...>
Date: 2002-03-15T23:08:45+09:00
Subject: Re: language addition: automatic 'new'

On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 06:43:07PM +0900, Vardhan Varma wrote:
> 
>  I wrote my first >1K ruby program over the week,
> and it occured to me, it would be great if
>    Klass(param)
>  be converted to 
>    Klass.new(param)
>   Automagically ...
>   or may be Klass.__default_ctor(param), where __default_ctor defaults to
> new,
>   and can be ressigned if required ...

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but it sounded like a challenge, so
here goes:

  module New_Shortcuts
    def self.undefined_method(obj, name)
      raise NameError, "undefined method `#{name}' for <#{obj.type}:0x#{'%x'%(obj.id)}>"
    end
  
    def self.recreate
      ObjectSpace.each_object(Object) do |obj|
        case obj
        when Class
          class_name = obj.inspect
          if obj.respond_to?(:new) then
            Object.instance_eval do
              define_method class_name.intern, obj.method(:new).to_proc
            end
          end
        end
      end
    end
  
    def self.method_missing(name, *args, &block)
      undefined_method(self, name)
    end
  end
  
  def self.method_missing(method_name, *args, &block)
    first_char = method_name.to_s[0].chr
    if first_char == first_char.upcase then
      New_Shortcuts.recreate
      if respond_to?(method_name, true) then
        return __send__(method_name, *args, &block)
      end
    end
    New_Shortcuts.undefined_method(self, method_name)
  end
  
  class Foo
    def initialize
      puts "Foo!"
    end
  end
  
  Foo() #=> prints Foo!
  Foo() #=> same thing again, just to show it works twice

Paul