Re: Class method's has a fuzzy meaning and a sharp meaning

Hi,

Actually, I groked that concept after I understood that "instance methods"
are actually the special ones.

I'll ignore Modules for this explanation. They make things a tiny bit more
complex, but without a lot of conceptual gain.

In Ruby, callable methods are bound to objects. Classes are objects, so they
have methods. Those methods are defined directly on the object itself.

All of the following 3 are equivalent:

 class Foo
   def self.bar #self is "Foo" in this context!
   end

   def Foo.bar
   end

   a = self
   def a.bar
   end
 end

Which means that they can be directly called:

 Foo.bar

Takeaway: you can, at any time, define a method on any object in Ruby. Even
on classes.


Now, the real problem - and thats where the Class/Object distinction comes into
play: how do I define methods on Objects that do not exist yet?

Thats what instance methods do: you define a method without an explicit object.

   class Foo
	def bar

	end
   end

If we inspect those two methods, they have an interesting difference:

   [3] pry(main)> Foo.method(:bar)
   => #<Method: Foo.bar>
   [4] pry(main)> Foo.instance_method(:bar)
   => #<UnboundMethod: Foo#bar>

The first one is _bound_ to an object (the class Foo) and thus can be called on it.

The second on is _unbound_, which also means that it cannot be called, because
it is not _bound_ yet, making things like "self" meaningless:

  [5] pry(main)> Foo.method(:bar).call
  => nil
  [6] pry(main)> Foo.instance_method(:bar).call
  NoMethodError: undefined method `call' for #<UnboundMethod: Foo#bar>...

Now, the special ability of classes comes into play: they can be _instantiated_, which
means that they can create objects that gain all those instance methods as normal
methods:

   [7] pry(main)> Foo.new.method(:bar)
   => #<Method: Foo#bar>

Note the slightly different notation: thats Foo#bar, the instance methods, not Foo.bar,
the class method.

So, I usually remember the whole system using 2 simple rules:

* You can define and call methods on objects
* You can define methods that serve as templates for methods that _future_ objects
will gain. Those are instance methods.

I hope that helped.

Regards,
Florian

P.S.: You can really define methods on any object at any time:

[11] pry(main)> def bla
[11] pry(main)*   s = "string"
[11] pry(main)*   def s.really?
[11] pry(main)*     "yes"
[11] pry(main)*   end  
[11] pry(main)*   s
[11] pry(main)* end  
=> nil
[12] pry(main)> bla.really?
=> "yes"

On Feb 21, 2013, at 9:09 PM, Xavier R. <[e-mail]> wrote:

> David A. Black in his book - "The Well-Grounded Rubyist"
> 
> "So class method has a fuzzy meaning and a sharp meaning. Fuzzily, any
> method that gets called directly on a Class object is a class method.
> Sharply, a class method is defined, not just called, directly on a Class
> object. You値l hear it used both ways, and as long as you池e aware of
> the underlying engineering and can make the sharp distinctions when you
> need to, you値l be fine."
> 
> As a beginner couldn't take the concept at all. So anyone out there -
> could you help me the above with some examples?
> 
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.