From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2011-10-26T23:14:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Modify only a .rb file, but not other .rb files, while still extending core classes?

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Marc Heiler <shevegen@linuxmail.org> wrote:
> Given is a small .rb file.
>
> In that .rb file, class Array is modified and a convenience
> method is added.
>
> class Array
>
>  def rand
>
> I want to limit this modification to only that specific
> .rb file though.
>
> When I use that .rb file in a larger project, I do not want
> the modification of class Array to leak out into other .rb
> files. Is there a way to limit the scope of the modification?
>
> Of course I can define a method simply and call that, but:
>
>  array.rand
>
> Looks better to my eyes than:
>
>  rand(array)
>
> So I would prefer to be able to do only the array.rand.

One solution would be to create a module with the rand method, and
extend only the arrays you use in that .rb:

# small.rb

module Randomizable
  def rand
     # your implentation
  end
end

some_elements = [1,2,3,4,5]
some_elements.extend(Randomizable)
some_elements.rand

All other arrays in the system will not be affected.

Jesus.