From: Colin Bartlett <colinb2r@...>
Date: 2010-05-10T19:39:42+09:00
Subject: Re: how to implement 20 - point and point - 20 using coerce()?

My apologies for the brevity and lack of explanation (I'm about to try
to catch a train), but this might do the sort of thing that you want?
(I think for coerce to work as you'd expect you need the operands(?)
in the coerce array to be in the same order as in the calculation.
Sorry if that doesn't make any sense! A fuller explanation will follow
quite a bit later if you need one.)

class Point
  attr_accessor :x, :y
  def initialize(x,y); @x, @y = x, y; end

  def -(q)
    return Point.new(@x - q.x, @y - q.y) if q.kind_of? Point
    Point.new(@x - q, @y - q)
  end

  def *(c); Point.new(@x * c, @y * c); end

  def -@(); Point.new(-@x, -@y); end

  def coerce(something); [Point::Coerce.new(something), self]; end
end

class Point::Coerce
  attr_reader :value

  def initialize(v); @value = v; end

  def *(p)
    puts "Point::Coerce #{@value} * #{p.inspect}"
    Point.new(@value * p.x, @value * p.y)
  end

  def -(p)
    puts "Point::Coerce #{@value} - #{p.inspect}"
    Point.new(@value - p.x, @value - p.y)
  end
end

p = Point.new(200,100)
q = Point.new(80,70)
puts
p p, q
puts
p (-p)
puts
p p - q
p q - p
puts
p p * 3
p 5 * p
puts
p p - 30
p 30 - p