From: "Jan E." <lists@...>
Date: 2012-05-22T19:17:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Changing self class from inside a method??

Hi,

I also don't think you can reassign self without digging into Ruby's 
source code. My idea was to at least *fake* an object transformation by 
making the nil instance a wrapper for an array:

#------------------
class NilClass
  def push *values
    @array = values
    values.methods.each do |method|
      define_singleton_method method do |*args, &block|
        @array.send method, *args, &block
      end
    end
  end
end

a = nil
a.push 1, 2
p a
puts a.class
#------------------

But then I realized that nil is actually a singleton object (there's 
only one nil). This somewhat makes the whole thing pointless, because 
any change to a nil instance would affect all "nils".

I don't see the point in this feature, anyway. It perhaps would make 
some sense if you didn't have to set the variable in the first place but 
could magically create a new array by calling the push method on a new 
identifier. PHP has this, for example:

$x[0] = "abc";  // this makes $x an array

But when you have to write "a = nil" first, then you might as well write 
"a = []" and leave out all the magic.

-- 
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