From: Stefan Salewski <mail@...>
Date: 2010-10-01T04:15:22+09:00
Subject: How to prevent overwriting methods by accident?

In Ruby we can add new methods to existing classes.
How can we ensure that the name of our new method does not already
exists -- I do not want to overwrite an existing method by accident. I
think there exists a way to list all currently existing methods of a
class, but the solution should work in future too( e.g. for Ruby 3.0
when predefined classes may have more predefined methods): I want
something like

class String
  def very_useful_method
    if already_defined(this_method)
      puts 'We are overwriting an existing method by accident'
      Process.exit
    end
  end
end

Best regards

Stefan Salewski