From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-05-17T12:55:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Metaclasses...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yukihiro Matsumoto" <matz@ruby-lang.org>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 7:47 PM
Subject: Re: Metaclasses...


> In message "Metaclasses..."
>     on 02/05/17, "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:
> 
> |I've been trying to understand metaclasses
> 
> You don't have to, because there's no such a thing in Ruby.
> In Smalltalk, a metaclass is a class of a class.
> 
> In Ruby, the Class class is the class of all classes, no metaclass.
> But every object (of course including classes) can have hidden
> meta-object (the place holder for singleton methods), which is only
> revealed by the "singleton class notation".

I realize that Smalltalk and Ruby differ on that.

But these meta-objects do exist.

But this is very interesting: You say that their purpose is to hold
singleton methods. Is this truly the only purpose for them in Ruby?

Thanks,
Hal