From: Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...>
Date: 2012-01-27T12:20:08+09:00
Subject: Re: A little assistance please :)

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On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Chad Perrin <code@apotheon.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 03:43:59AM +0900, Dave Aronson wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 23:32, Chad Perrin <code@apotheon.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Because self already has meaning in Ruby, when you try to define a
> class
> > > like this:
> > >
> > >    class self.Startup
> > >
> > > . . . Ruby is trying to call a Startup method on the Object object (no,
> > > that repetition wasn't accidental -- there's an object called Object)
> and
> > > use the return value of that method as the name of the class you're
> > > trying to define.
> >
> > So if I had a class with a method that returned a string, I could use
> > that where the name is expected in a class declaration?  That doesn't
> > seem right.  Tried it in irb, using both a class method (Foo.bar) and
> > an instance method (foo.bar), and neither worked.
>
> No, you couldn't do that either.  I'm explaining why you got the error
> Ruby gave you, not giving you suggestions for how to name classes in
> horrible programmatic ways.  If you *did* want to name a class in a
> horrible programmatic way, you'd have to do something like:
>
>    bar = "Hello" + "World"
>
>    foo = <<EOF
>    class #{bar}
>      def initialize(name='World')
>        @name = name
>      end
>
>      def greet
>        return "Hello, #{@name}!"
>      end
>    end
>    EOF
>
>    eval(foo)
>
>    hello = HelloWorld.new
>    hello.greet
>
> There may be easier ways to achieve the same end but, in general, don't
> do it.  It'll probably just get your code in trouble.
>
> --
> Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
>
>
It's incredibly rare to need to resort to string evaluation. This example
can be rewritten as:

bar = "Hello" + "World"

klass = Class.new do
  def initialize(name='World')
    @name = name
  end

  def greet
    return "Hello, #{@name}"
  end
end

Object.const_set bar, klass

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