From: Colin Bartlett <colinb2r@...>
Date: 2010-09-18T10:56:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Get hours, seconds and time from Date.day_fraction_to_time

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See below at *** for two "work-arounds" which seem to allow you to do what
you want in Ruby 1.9 as well as in 1.8.6 and 1.8.7.

Some links for explanations of private and public (and protected) methods:
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/2/23/method-visibility-in-ruby
Here (for example) under Access Control:
http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/tut_classes.html
...
Private methods cannot be called with an explicit receiver. Because you
cannot specify an object when using them, private methods can be called only
in the defining class and by direct descendents within that same object.

Compare the "full" code for the 1.8 and 1.9 versions of Date. (See just
below.) The 1.8 version can only be used as a class method
Date.day_fraction_to_time, but the 1.9 version can also be used as a
*private* instance method.

That said, I don't know why the class (singleton) method
day_fraction_to_time was changed from public in Date before 1.9 to private
in 1.9, and I would welcome any enlightened suggestions. (One reason for
making a method private is, I assume, to warn people that an internal
implementation detail might change, so it would be unwise to use such a
private method in case its implementation changes in the future. That gives
more freedom to the code originator for future changes.)

# In 1.8:
class Date
  #...
    def self.day_fraction_to_time(fr)
  #...
    end
  #...
end

# But in 1.9:
class Date
  #...
  t = Module.new do
    private
  #...
    def day_fraction_to_time(fr) # :nodoc:
  #...
    end
  #...
  end
  extend t
  include t
  #...
end


*** work arounds

require "date"

start = DateTime.now
sleep 3
stop = DateTime.now
# minutes
puts( ((stop - start) * 24 * 60).to_i )

puts "Date.day_fraction_to_time"
begin
    hours, minutes, seconds, frac =
      Date.day_fraction_to_time( stop - start ) # works in 1.8.6 & 1.8.7
    p hours, minutes, seconds, frac
rescue # raises exception in 1.9.1
    p $!
end

puts "Date.day_fraction_to_time using __send__"
hours, minutes, seconds, frac =
Date.__send__( :day_fraction_to_time, stop - start )
p hours, minutes, seconds, frac

puts "Date.day_fraction_to_time using wrapper"
class Date
    class << self
      def wrap_day_fraction_to_time( day_frac )
        day_fraction_to_time( day_frac )
      end
   end
end
hours, minutes, seconds, frac =
    Date.wrap_day_fraction_to_time( stop - start )
p hours, minutes, seconds, frac

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