From: Nikodemus Siivola <tsiivola@...>
Date: 2002-04-12T22:39:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Idea for a new shorthand


On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, David Alan Black wrote:

> I've always thought of super as a Y-axis thing, and alias as an X-axis
> thing.  I'm not sure whether they can be combined into one thing,
> without some loss.  Here's a rather contrived example:

I may have misunderstood, but I don't think Hal ment "prior" as a
"super" replacement thing at all:

I think he ment that instead of

  1) alias an existing method with an obscure name
  2) redefine the original name and inside the new method
     call the original with the new, obscure name

you could

  Redifine a method and call "prior" inside the new method to access the
  original definition.

This would be just amazingly beautiful. In your example:

 class Thing < String
    def split(*sep)
      puts "New split"
      prior(*sep) # here both super and prior would work since they refer
    end           # to the same method
  end

  class Thing
    def split(*sep)
      line = gets
      if /o/.match(line)
        prior(*sep)
      else
        super
      end
    end
  end

 -- Nikodemus